WW2 Missions That Changed The War | Enola Gay, Doolittle, Flying Tigers | The Complete Documentaries

[Music] [Music] summer 1945. the war in europe is over [Music] but the world is not yet at peace in the east japan fights on her imperial navy is all but ruined her armies are destroyed or cut off on isolated islands her air forces are crippled by the loss of her experienced pilots [Music] japan's dream of empire is shattered but her military leaders refused to surrender the battle for okinawa ended in mid-june after 82 days of ferocious fighting from there the allied forces of america and britain planned to attack the home islands of japan but their victory on okinawa had come at a terrible price more than 50 000 allied soldiers sailors and airmen were dead wounded or missing more than 100 000 japanese soldiers were killed or committed suicide and more than 100 000 okinawan civilians perhaps a third of the population were dead many of them by suicide as allied leaders prepared for a massive invasion of japan's home islands military leaders in japan swore to fight to the very last man woman and child in late july united states president harry truman and british prime minister winston churchill made a fateful decision one that they hoped would end the war as soon as possible and save both the allies and the japanese from the bloodbath of an invasion [Music] [Applause] on 6 august 1945 the americans unleashed a weapon the likes of which had never been seen before the atomic bomb six years and two billion dollars in the making the atomic bomb would finally bring an end to the second world war perhaps no mission has ever changed the course of war more definitively or abruptly than the one undertaken by the 509th special squadron of the u.s army air forces and the b-29 bomber called the enola gay [Music] i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] [Music] 6 august 1945 8 10 a.m local time 32 000 feet above the city of hiroshima japan a lone american b-29 bomber made its way toward a point over the city's center dutch van kirk was the navigator of that lone b-29 today he is the last surviving member of her 12-man crew to the day paul tibbetts died he and i would argue about whether or not i volunteered for this job he'd say well you when i called you you volunteered i'd say yeah when i got my damn orders i noticed that dated two days before your telephone call so much for the volunteering part i was flying with the crew that you know the captain in charge of that crew couldn't handle them his name was rocket and nothing about him but he had two two characters in his outfit they couldn't handle one of the stead or javed kirk and the others thomas w fairby and uh so i said that's the crew i want they'll do what i want them to do well it worked out that way because that's the beginning of a long relationship between the two of us we didn't fly together too much but we knew where each other was and all that sort of thing when i got the bomb project my first first two people i asked for on that fateful morning in hiroshima japanese authorities ignored that lone bomber it was too high for fighters or anti-aircraft fire and besides a single enemy bomber was not much cause for concern at precisely 8 15 and 17 seconds bombardier tom farabe released a single 5-ton object from the aircraft's bombay freed of its heavy load the b-29 surged upward sergeant wyatt dusenberry the flight engineer pushed the throttles forward and the pilot colonel paul tibbetts banked the aircraft left into a gut-wrenching turn that would take it far away from the target as quickly as possible it was an evasive maneuver the crew had practiced many times the object fell for 43 seconds through the clear air toward its aiming point the t-shaped a-o-e bridge at 1890 feet above the waking city of hiroshima the object known to its builders as the little boy erupted in an unimaginable burst of heat and light a single weapon with the power of 13 to 18 000 tons of high explosive tnt in an instant its 1200 foot fireball reached 7000 degrees fahrenheit near ground zero sand melted into glass and every living thing was vaporized or turned instantly to carbon a full mile from the center of the blast the shock wave turned buildings into shrapnel in the cockpit of the enola gay nine miles from the blast it was as if a thousand flash bulbs had popped off all at once in the tail gunner bob karen winced in pain and tore off the special goggles issued to the crew even through the polarized welding glass lenses he feared he had been struck blind by what he later described as the fire of a thousand suns of all the enola gays crew karen had the best view of the blast to the rest of the crew he described a roiling fiery mushroom-shaped cloud that boiled up 30 40 50 000 feet a moment later the first shock wave from the blast hit the airplane shaking the huge bomber like a leaf in a gale the aircraft was shaken a second time as the shockwave rebounded off the earth below but the enola gay held together [Music] deke parsons the enola gays weaponer and bomb commander sent a coded message to tinian the mission was a success below the city had vanished beneath a boiling pole of dirty brown smoke flames were erupting everywhere karen likened it to bubbling molasses or the fires of hell colonel tibbetts turned the plane broadside to the blast to give the crew a better view while karen wrestled with a bulky k20 camera the rest of the 12-man crew was mostly silent the first thing we saw was a mushroom-shaped cloud so-called mushroom shaped cloud all different colors within the base of that cloud and on top of it was a mushroom you could see it was up well above our altitude already i guess yeah 40 000 going higher and then as we turn on around and everything we could see the city of hiroshima and we can make absolutely no visual observation because the entire city was covered with thick black smoke and everything you want the description of it i say it looked like a pot of boiling oil down there as tibbetts turned the enola gay toward tinian and home many of the men on board shared a single thought this could be the end of the war [Applause] as they headed back to their base atinian six hours away in the marianas islands the men aboard the enola gay were awestruck by what they had seen they struggled to find the words to describe it from the tail karen could see the mushroom cloud for more than an hour finally 400 miles from hiroshima he reported to the rest of the crew that the cloud was no longer visible as the plane flew southward across the featureless pacific ocean conversation dwindled among the crew as the excitement of the mission wore off we were all so damn tired we're coming back we did it didn't make any difference what mood we were in for crying out loud from tinian captain parsons radio message was forwarded to the pentagon president harry truman was aboard the uss augusta returning from a meeting with britain's winston churchill and russia's joseph stalin during lunch with a group of enlisted men truman was handed a copy of the message from tinian this he exclaimed is the greatest thing in history [Music] the world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on hiroshima a military base we have used it in order to shorten the agony of war in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young americans aboard the enola gay the crew talked of the end of the war some speculated that it might be all over by the time they landed at tinian how could the japanese fight on everybody said they can but not possibly stand up to force like this [Music] in fact dick nelson made it much simpler he said this war is over [Music] the atomic bomb was an entirely new weapon more complex more sophisticated and more deadly than any weapon system that had come before it the airplane that delivered the atomic bomb was equally innovative a technological marvel at the time it was the largest and most sophisticated aircraft ever flown with its large bomb load and very long range the b-29 was designed and built for just one purpose to strike at the very heart of imperial japan [Music] in 1939 with the threat of war gathering in europe the army air corps requested design proposals for a very long range super bomber things looked so bad in europe that it would look like great britain would be defeated and occupied by the nazis the united states would have to bomb europe from the united states and so it came into being the idea of the intercontinental bomber now it was ultimately realized in the b-36 but it set everybody's minds thinking boeing aircraft company had a set of brilliant engineers they had done a whole series of design studies that led ultimately to the b-29 they incorporated in it so many things that would otherwise be regarded as too risky to involve into a single design to get the performance that they thought they would need they incorporated pressurization in a bomber they incorporated new engines new propellers new fire control systems new metallurgy new types of aluminum in it everything was was pushed to an extreme when it came into being we had a very checkered career there were constant problems with engine fires and so on and yet without a doubt it was the most advanced bomber of the war so it was it was the supreme bomber of world war ii [Music] boeing's b-17 bomber could carry up to 8 000 pounds of bombs and had a maximum range of two thousand miles at a top speed below 300 miles per hour for its new super bomber the army air corps specified a bomb load of 20 000 pounds a top speed of 400 miles per hour and a range of over 5000 miles the b-29 would be the largest and most complex aircraft of the second world war it would extend the range of strategic bombing over distances never before seen in combat with its pressurized compartments automated gun controls huge engines and immense size and range b-29 was in its day one of the most complicated pieces of movable machinery ever manufactured and it was designed built tested refined and ready for combat in just four years [Music] building the b-29 was not a simple task thousands of subcontractors fed parts to the five main assembly plants two in washington state and one each in georgia kansas and nebraska when the japanese attacked pearl harbor on 7 december 1941 and brought the united states fully into world war ii the xb29 prototypes were not yet completed but the army was already impressed with the design one month after pearl harbor the b-29 went into full production with an order for 500 aircraft the prototypes had not yet been flown [Music] in the first months of the war it was clear to american military planners that no other bomber had the necessary range to strike decisively at the heart of japan and the army pressured boeing to complete the b-29s in record time but the air corps requirements for the b-29 were challenging its design was highly advanced and the aircraft was plagued with problems throughout the b-29s development and for much of its service life the most common source of problems was the engines the wright r-3350 duplex cyclo was one of the most powerful radial engines ever built with its eighteen air-cooled turbocharged cylinders in two rows this mammoth produced up to 3 700 horsepower but it had problems the rear cylinders tended to overheat and cause engine fires the crank case was made of high magnesium alloy it burned so intensely that it could burn through the main wingspar in seconds with predictable and catastrophic results once it was airborne the b-29 could fly on just two of its four engines but the failure of a single engine during takeoff could be disastrous with a full combat load of bombs and fuel other problems included uneven distribution of the air fuel mixture to the cylinders and the engine's tendency to eat its own valves during world war ii nearly all b-29s operated in the tropics where high temperatures on the runway increased the risk of engine fires and reduced aircraft performance engineers at boeing and curtis wright tried many fixes but the b-29s engine problems continued until the introduction of the 28-cylinder pratt and whitney r-4360 which came too late for world war ii during the war mechanics in the field scrambled to keep up with the fixes ordered by the engineers including replacing the five top cylinders on each engine every 25 hours of engine time and replacing each entire engine every 75 hours it was hardly standard practice to put an airplane into production before its prototype had been built and flown through 1942 and 43 as bugs in the design were discovered and fixed many changes were applied on the production line the b-29 is just one example of progress being accelerated by the demands of war by the end of 1943 production was in full swing but there were so many changes that the b-29s coming off the production line were flown straight to modification depots for extensive refits bad weather and other delays meant that in early 1944 boeing had built nearly 100 b-29s but fewer than 15 were airworthy general hamp arnold commander of the air corps stepped in to tighten the screws and by mid april 150 b-29s were ready for deployment [Music] [Music] if the b-29 was driving its mechanics to drink the crews that flew and manned it liked the super fortress for the first time in a high altitude bomber they could shed their bulky flight suits and uncomfortable oxygen masks and work in heated and pressurized comfort the big 29 is like a cadillac compared to a b-17 at b-17 you always put your oxygen mask on on your your water rocks and bass continuously if you moved around you had to take a portable bottle with you and it was cold it was uncomfortable it was noisy i could give you a lot of things wrong with it power settings had to be calculated precisely and frequently for best performance getting the right takeoff and landing speeds was especially critical based on weight air temperature and field elevation but all the extra charts and arithmetic paid off in more speed and longer range the most revolutionary feature of the b-29 was its central fire control system or cfcs each of the four gun turrets mounted two 50-caliber machine guns each turret could be controlled by any one of four analog computers one in the nose and three in the pressurized waste compartment the fifth gunner in the tail could control his own pair of 50 caliber machine guns or the guns in the rear ventral turret the crewman in the rear dorsal turret was the central fire control gunner who assigned the turrets to each of the other gunners the computer-controlled gun site for each turret compensated for the b-29 speed the target's speed and angle temperature humidity and gravity the analog gun side computer was highly advanced for its time and gave b-29 gunners an effective kill range of one thousand yards twice the range of a manually aimed gun turret [Music] paul warfield tibbetts jr the man who would later become a u.s air force and aviation icon as the commander of the first ever atomic bomb mission was born in quincy illinois on 23 february 1915. the family moved to iowa in 1918 where tibbett's father worked in his family's grocery business [Music] when young paul was nine his father moved the family to miami florida and with a partner started a successful wholesale candy company [Music] in the summer of 1927 doug davis a barnstorming pilot was under contract with the curtis candy company to fly over county fairs horse races and other public events and drop its new baby roof candy bars from his airplane in miami davis came to see the elder tibbetts who was the distributor for curtis candies young paul sat in on the meeting and was enthralled by the dashing pilot davis needed someone to ride along in his airplane and drop the candy young paul volunteered reluctant at first his father agreed he looked at my father he said mrs simmons i have to have somebody fly with me in the front seat and throw these bars out while i fly from the back seat i'll throw them out there and of course i held my hand up right away my father looked at me and he said no not you and uh my dad's business partner said paul let him go for god's sake let him go and uh doug davis spoke up at the time he said mr timothy said i'm married i got a lovely wife for two lovely girls daughters and he said i'm going out there flying this airplane just like it should be flowing i'm not gonna hurt myself and i'm sure not gonna hurt him and my father relented and said okay that was giving my first ride throwing candy bars out over hialeah racetrack well i'm fascinated by that machine i'll tell you nothing like it [Applause] as they flew over the local racetrack just after the second race paul threw out handfuls of the sweets the baby ruths landed on target and as the crowd scrambled for the goodies davis made two more bomb runs over the track before heading downtown to the beach they flew similar missions every day for a week before davis moved on to another city he later joined eastern airlines and became its most famous pilot helping to pioneer air travel in the u.s young paul tibbetts never forgot the excitement of those flights over miami in 1928 as young tibbetts prepared for eighth grade his father sent him to western military academy in alton illinois where he would spend the next five school years at first tibbetts wrangled at the discipline of the academy but eventually he chose to make the best of it he became a good student and an average athlete he had a few run-ins with the cadet commander over various infractions but the fairness with which he was disciplined made a lasting impression and it would influence his own style as a commander in world war ii in later life he described his five years at the academy as distasteful but he also believed that they were useful in preparing him for the challenges he would face as an adult the summer before he started college tibbetts hung around miami's opalaca airport fueling planes and doing chores to earn money for flying lessons he soloed that summer in a taylor cub after six hours of dual instruction after five years of military school tibbetts had trouble adjusting to the freewheeling college life and he nearly flunked out of the university of florida as a pre-med student at the university of cincinnati he helped out in a local clinic and spent his free time flying for the fun of it tibbetts found himself less and less enthusiastic about his chosen career in medicine and more and more excited about aviation [Music] as tibbetts pondered his future in late 1936 douglas aircraft company introduced the dc-3 airliner suddenly commercial air travel went from daring to safe and reliable and tibbetts found his calling lacking the funds for a commercial pilot's license he applied to be a cadet in the army air corps and was inducted in february 1937. i said dad i'm uh going to be leaving school he tried look at me leave the school what for what i want i'm going down to san antonio become a flying cadet and learn to fly airplanes in the army air corps he said well you're over 21 i guess that's all right but he said i want to remind you something he said going back for a long time i've supported you pretty well i bought your clothes and did everything for you put shoes on your feet and all that but he said now that's finished you're on your own the army he reasoned would teach him to fly and launch him on a career as an airline pilot it never occurred to him that he might fly in combat at randolph field in texas he was determined not to wash out his five years at alton had taught him all about military discipline and spit and polish if following the rules was the key to success he would follow them to the letter avoiding every temptation to slack off or show off [Music] tibbetts finished basic training at the head of his class and received the army air wings in february 1938 as a top graduate he was given his choice of assignment pursuit as fighters were called then or observation there were no bomber pilots in the air corps in those days on the advice of one of the tactical officers at randolph he chose observation that would open the door to solo missions and multi-engine training during advanced training at fort benning georgia tibbetts met a pretty department store clerk named lucy wingate they were married in june 1938 after completing his advanced multi-engine training tibbetts stayed at fort benning flying the martin b10 bomber mostly towing gunnery targets in early 1940 the air corps third attack group received the new douglas 820 havoc to fly the high performance attack bomber the army searched for pilots with 1 000 hours or more of multi-engine time [Music] tibbetts name was on that list he was transferred to the group's base at hunter field near savannah and assigned as engineering officer for the 90th attack squadron [Music] in 1940 the focus was on europe not japan and the pacific in occupied europe the germans were building flak towers up to 100 feet high and mounting anti-aircraft guns on top of them pilots in the third attack group learned to fly their 820 havocs at high speed in tight formations at 100 feet or less above the ground that would allow them to fly below the german flag towers hugging terrain to avoid enemy gunners and plane spotters tibbetts enjoyed the challenge it required steady nerves and precise flying skills by 1941 it was becoming clear to many americans that the war was coming the u.s was organizing its civil defense system for warning of air attacks tibbetts 90th squadron was charged with putting the new system to the test their simulated low-level attacks on cities like boston and new york showed that the system was woefully inadequate theoretically tibbetts later wrote he and his squadron destroyed most of the east coast attacking coastal cities roaring in on the wave tops in tight formation at 200 miles per hour the a20s would sometimes nudge each other a wingtip denting a fuselage or propeller nibbling at an elevator but there were no serious accidents and the pilots of the 90th squadron became experts at low-level tactics tibbetts was on a return flight to the squadron's base at savannah when he heard the news that the japanese had attacked the american naval base at pearl harbor [Music] tibbetts was selected for training in the new b-17 bomber and the b-17s were slow in coming he was temporarily assigned to form an anti-submarine patrol unit flying douglas b-18 bombers as american war production geared up the big flying fortresses began to arrive along with the crews that would fly them the b-17 was the largest land plane of its day and some people thought it was too big and too complex for regular army air corps crews to handle tibbetts was given command of the 40th squadron of the 97th heavy bomb group at mcdill field in tampa florida it was his task to prepare his green b-17 air crews for combat it was an exhausting job tibbetts sometimes flew 18 hours a day checking out the new pilots there was little time and few resources to turn the raw airmen into effective combat crews now the training was nothing you just flew the airplane around you'd take barrels out of the gulf of mexico and drop them into water and they'd fly around and shoot at them that was our training and we had no gun retraining or anything most of the time we didn't have ammunition to train when we got to england we were the blind leading the blind believe me we were too soon tibbetts squadron was ordered to the west coast bound for the pacific we got orders to go to fresno california now the group commander was not with me but he got on a telephone he called me said paul you're going to get orders to go to fresno california i am in pennsylvania here at olmsted with the other two squatters wish i knew he said i will get the message i will send one message to you about where to go and i will join you later i got my message we got in the airplanes we started for fresno california during their few weeks in fresno california tibbetts drilled his men constantly in formation flying navigation and other critical skills but when their orders came the 97th bomb group was sent back across the country to bangor maine in early june they were finally ordered to england on 17 august 1942 tibbetts led 18 b-17s on the first daylight raid by american bombers on german occupied europe their target was the railroad marshaling yards at ruin france prior to that raid british and american bombers had been striking german occupied targets only at night the germans at ruin were not expecting a daylight raid tibbetts and his bombers caught them by surprise that day about half the squadron's bombs hit their targets at ruin their accuracy was less than was hoped for but it was still much better than nighttime raids were achieving two of tibbetts bombers were damaged by flack their spitfire escorts drove off three german fighters all the bombers returned safely to england the only injuries were caused by a pigeon that smashed through the nose of one plane pelting the bombardier and navigator with shards of plexiglas in october tibbetts led b-17s and b-24s to leo france it was the first time more than 100 bombers were joined in a single raid dutch van kirk would become tibbetts navigator entered the army air corps cadet program in october 1941 and earned his navigator's wings six months later at kelley field in texas after about a week there maybe two weeks they called out a bunch of names of 30 people and they got us together and they said you people are going through here in half the normal time well they forgot to been doubled up on a calisthenics as well as the classes and everything else they can't almost kill us for heaven's sakes so they we finally convinced them they only needed the regular calisthenics and but we went through in double time we almost all went to the 97th bomber again uh my first combat mission we didn't get any enemy action so i come back and i thought oh this is a snap no touching to it and i think it was maybe the third or fourth mission that uh i changed my mind i've been looking out the window on my right on the right hand side we had two guns up there and one out the right one out the left and a 30 caliber out the nose and we never hit a damn thing but that's okay i was looking out the window on the right-hand side i turned around and looked back a little bit look out the window on the left-hand side that time i turned around looked back at the window on the right-hand side there are four bullet holes where my head had been and i decided they're fruiting at me i earned my money today so from that one we knew we're in a war [Music] that october tibbetts now a lieutenant colonel was given the job of flying general mark clark from england to algeria to meet with french commanders prior to operation torch the american invasion of north africa tibbetts stayed in north africa flying bombing missions when it moved to algiers in january of 1943 he became chief of bomber operations for general jimmy doolittle who commanded the 12th air force in africa less than a month later general hap arnold commander of the army air forces asked doolittle to send back to the states his best field grade officer with most experience in b-17s the air forces had a problem and paul tibbetts was just the man to fix it [Music] arriving in washington in late february 1943 tibbetts learned that the army air force's newest bomber the b-29 was in serious trouble the aircraft was plagued with problems mostly related to the newly developed wright r-3350 engines in july tibbetts was sent to new mexico to test the b-29 bomber's combat characteristics with p-47 fighters making simulated attacks the big bomber was hard to control in the thin air at high altitudes it would be impossible to fly in tight combat box formations tibbetts began to doubt the airplane's ability to survive in combat on a day when his regular test plane was out of service he borrowed a stripped-down b-29 without its seven thousand pounds of guns and ammunition the plane flew higher and faster and was much easier to control above 30 000 feet the lightened b-29 could turn tighter than a p-47 and could outrun the fighters it was an important lesson that he would later put to good use [Applause] [Music] [Applause] in september 1944 tibbetts was called to colorado springs to organize and train a bomber group for a super secret mission one that might end the war the manhattan project america's program to develop an atomic bomb was far enough along that figuring out how to deliver the weapon and training the crews to do it had become an urgent concern the army air force did not want a suicide mission tibbetts job was to figure out how to deliver the bomb safely and to assemble a bomb group specially trained to drop the weapon he was to prepare two special bomber squadrons one for japan and one for germany tibbetts would get whatever men and resources he needed if anyone refused the code word silver plate would breach all barriers as his base tibbetts chose wendover field in utah the facilities were adequate and very isolated uso comedian bob hope called it leftover field the men called it the end of nowhere as the core of his 509th composite group tibbetts chose the 393rd bomber squadron a combat-ready b-29 unit and he began bringing in the best crewman from his b-17 days bombardier tom farabe navigator dutch van kirk flight engineer wyatt dusenberry and tailgunner bob karen these men formed tibbett's own b-29 crew and helped to train the other crews it really came home to me when you saw when they were describing what you were going to do that you were going to do something that would destroy an entire city it could be you're going to shorten the war and the war and you saw a bunch of guys running around who you knew were nuclear fissures how many people in the organization knew enough about atomic energy at that time to guess that we were working on an atomic bomb it's beyond me security was extremely tight only tibbetts knew the unit's true purpose and the men were cautioned don't talk to anyone and don't even be curious you didn't talk about it because if you did you would send get the illusions there's no place like that how does one drop an atomic bomb and get away safely the scientists came to us and right at the beginning and they one of one of them said we think you will be okay if you're nine miles away when the bomb explodes i can remember looking at the guy and saying what the hell do you mean you think we could be wrong some guys are saying it could be 50 miles away some people are saying you can't get far enough away the bomb would be released from six miles high a steep turn of 155 degrees and a shallow dive for speed would put the plane about nine miles away from the explosion immediately we decided we wanted to use stripped-down b-29s these were b-29s had all the turrets taken out all the guns taken out except the tail guns as much of the weight as we could get out of that b-29 take it out and get rid of it so it could get up higher and go faster we could not have done this mission in a regular p-29 with stripped-down b-29s the crews dropped dummy bombs and practiced navigation and the evasion maneuver that tibbetts had worked out germany surrendered on 8 may 1945. the 509th composite group now had only one target japan they were ready but at los alamos the scientists argued about the odds a one in ten thousand chance that the bomb's trigger would fail they wanted one in a million tibbetts said he would take ten thousand to one any day and he gave the order to move the bombers to tinion 1500 miles from japan the pieces were in place for a mission that might end the war most people have no concept of why we dropped the bombs at the time we did they just assume that we drop the bombs in order to cause those large casualties [Music] they do not take time to read it and understand it and no matter what you tell them i don't think they're the most people will never understand it you go to high schools today and the high schools today don't understand anything about world war ii i think i did describe how i was introduced at once high school and as a as a veteran of world war 11. [Music] in part two of the enola gay the mission to hiroshima [Music] [Music] so [Music] there had been no other mission like it in history the use of an atomic bomb for strategic purposes in time of war the complexity and destructive power of the weapon is well documented [Music] that the little boy dropped on hiroshima and the fat man dropped on nagasaki three days later caused the japanese leadership to change its policy of defending the home islands to the last man woman and child to one of immediate surrender is a matter of historical fact [Music] it is a singular story of technological genius and the fog of war magnificent courage and terrible suffering diligent planning and unpredictable happenstance the mission of the b-29 bomber called the enola gay and its crew on august 6 1945 not only changed the second world war it changed the face of warfare as we know it until this day it was in fact a mission that changed human history i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the boeing b-29 super fortress the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb was as much a technological marvel as the bomb itself it featured innovations like a pressurized cabin an electronic fire control system and remote controlled gun turrets its wingspan 141 feet was nearly twice the span of boeing's b-17 flying fortress at 155 000 pounds combat weight the b-29 was one of the largest aircraft to serve in world war ii it went from drawing board to combat in less than four years it went into full production before its prototype flew and the first b-29s to come off the assembly line were full of problems but eventually it became a very capable strategic bomber and it served the u.s air force through the end of the 1950s [Music] in late 1944 the united states was well on the way to developing an atomic bomb the u.s army air forces created a special b-29 bomber group to deliver the bomb the 509th composite group its leader was lieutenant colonel paul tibbetts one of the eighth air force's most experienced b-17 pilots and a test pilot for the b-29 program tibbetts was tasked with organizing and training two special bomb units one for germany and one for japan as the core of his 509th composite group he chose the 393rd bomber squadron a combat ready unit of 15 b-29s in an archival interview paul tibbetts talked about the mission you got a tremendous amount of responsibility there you've got a tremendous amount of authority be careful of how you use it we're in general ant's office and he is instructing me as to my assignment you are going to organize and train a unit to drop these atomic bombs simultaneously in both europe and japan and he told me about using my code word of silver plate but he said general arnold had advised his entire staff in washington that any requisition with the word silver plate would be honored without question i reflected back over the things that have been said knowing that it was going to be the most important thing that i ever did in my life he added three more factory fresh b-29s to the group personally selecting his own aircraft from boeing's production line one of his main concerns was how to drop an atomic bomb and get away safely the bomb would be dropped from 30 000 feet and it would explode 43 seconds later tibbetts worked out an evasive maneuver that would get his bomber nine miles from the blast the scientists came to us and right at the beginning and they from one of one of them said we think you will be okay if you're nine miles away when the bomb explodes i remember looking at the guy and saying what the hell do you mean you think we could be wrong some guys are saying it could be 50 miles away some people are saying you can't get far enough away so you just paid your money you took your choice the 509th trained at an isolated airfield at wendover utah their mission was super secret only tibbetts and a handful of officers knew what they were training for though others may have guessed we had every telephone coming into wind over utah or going out it was tapped security was the most important thing that we had to maintain because they didn't want anything to get out tibbetts cautioned the men of the 509th not to talk to anyone about the unit and not to speculate about its purpose violators quickly found themselves transferred to the aleutian islands in alaska where they could talk as much as they liked to the walruses and seagulls the air crews practiced navigation and dropped practice bombs called pumpkins that were shaped like the bulbous atomic bomb but filled with conventional high explosives for maximum altitude and speed they stripped their b-29s dumping 7000 pounds of gun turrets ammunition and other gear their only remaining armaments were their tail guns by april 1945 it was clear that the war in europe was in its final days the bombers of the 509th now had just one target japan in early may they began shipping out to tinian an island in the marianas group 1200 miles from the japanese homeland tinian is a 39 square mile coral island roughly 5 by 13 miles in the northern marianas island chain 3 700 miles from hawaii claimed by japan after world war one it was mainly a sugar plantation under japanese rule during world war ii the japanese built two small airfields and launched fighters and light bombers from the island u.s marines invaded the island in july 1944 and secured it on august 1st 8 000 japanese soldiers died in the nine-day battle the marines lost 328 dead and 1500 wounded several hundred japanese soldiers remained hidden in tinian's semi-tropical jungles the last survivor was captured in 1953 [Music] with tinian secured fifteen thousand seabees moved in to build runways and prepare camps for fifty thousand personnel they built two airfields for the b-29s a total of six eighty five hundred foot runways said to be the longest runways in the world at the time tinian became the busiest military airfield in the war [Music] mass bombing raids from tinian began in november 1944. on the night of 10 march 1945 279 b-29s flying below 6000 feet dropped 1700 tons of bombs on japan's capital city tokyo the bombs ignited a firestorm that destroyed 16 square miles of the city and killed at least 100 000 japanese 14 b-29s were lost these masked raids continued until the end of the war on tinian the 509th was again shrouded in secrecy while other b-29 units flew low-level airstrikes on japan from which some crews did not return the planes of the 509th flew milk runs dropping their pumpkin-shaped bombs from high altitude far out of reach of enemy fighters and flack [Music] units began to view tibbetts crews as pampered misfits who contributed nothing to the war effort when words slipped out that the group's mission might end the fighting someone wrote a satirical song called the 509th is winning the war in truth the group's station on tinian was not hardship duty the hours were long and the work was hard but there were white coral beaches and a hospital full of pretty nurses to provide recreation in mid-july the 509th began flying missions to japan dropping their pumpkin bombs on military and industrial targets in contrast to the huge low-level raids the 509th sent only two or three bombers at a time over japan and bombed in daylight from high altitude around 30 000 feet the japanese began to ignore these daytime attacks after all two or three bombs did little damage compared to the massive nighttime raids on 17 july tibbetts received a coded message from general groves head of the manhattan project the atom bomb test had been successful scientists had set off the world's first atomic explosion at almogordo new mexico up to then it had all been theories and high hopes now the super weapon was a reality [Music] from tinian colonel tibbetts made three round trips to washington between may and july to work out problems and to discuss target selection for the atom bomb at first the list of possible targets included the cities of kyoto hiroshima yokohama and kokura all of these cities were important industrial or military centers and all had been spared from conventional bombing kyoto was taken off the list when secretary of state henry stinson pointed out that it had great historic and religious significance to the japanese remember up to this time they had a target committee and a lot of people picking out targets and everything else these targets which had had never before been bombed by any other means i knew the five of them beforehand but i didn't know which one it would be but we were all in favor of hiroshima that was a where we could do the most good with one bomb that we were going to drop and everything else that's because they the second the army was there you don't probably don't realize it but 25 of the people killed in hiroshima were military people and then you had materiel that was going over to shikoku for the defense of japan and everything else you could probably do more good at bombing that than you could have any other city [Music] the 509th continued to fly practice missions to japan dropping their black powder bombs configured in shapes similar to the anticipated atomic bomb in mid-july tibbetts learned that the atomic mission might be given to a different b-29 unit colonel butch blanchard the senior operations officer on tinian had argued that other b-29 crews were more experienced and more qualified tibbetts countered that the 509th had been training specifically for the atomic bomb mission and were fully competent to fly it he offered to take blanchard on a practice mission to prove his point with blanchard in the jump seat tibbetts flew to nearby rota island still held by the japanese the tibbetts plane arrived at its target precisely on time and dropped its simulated atom bomb precisely on target with the bomb away tibbetts snapped the big bomber into the evasive maneuver his crews had practiced blanchard turned pale as the g-forces pinned him to his seat he declared that he'd seen enough the 509th would drop the atom bomb the b-29 is not supposed to only go together under that maneuver we later found out make the turn when you're coming office steep enough so your tail starts to stall then you know you have to turn steep enough and just push the throttles forward lose a couple thousand feet in the turn and just run like hell [Music] in the second half of july the 509th made a dozen conventional raids on japanese cities dropping the simulated atom bombs bulbous shaped casings filled with black powder or other conventional explosives the raids avoided cities that were on the atom bomb target list their strange tactics just two or three bombers at high altitude confused the japanese fighters almost never tried to intercept the bombers and anti-aircraft fire couldn't reach the b-29s at 30 000 feet gradually the japanese became accustomed to seeing small groups of bombers that didn't cause much damage although some of the pumpkin-shaped bombs were aimed by radar onto cloud-covered targets it was decided that the atomic bomb would only be dropped if the target were clearly visible to the bombardier colonel tibbetts was prohibited from flying these practice missions to japan general curtis lemay who commanded all b-29 combat operations against japan declared that tibbetts was too valuable to the atom bomb mission and knew too much to risk falling into japanese hands the pumpkin raids proved to tibbetts that his crews were ready for the atom bomb mission they could deliver the bomb precisely on time and precisely on target the practice bombing missions also revealed a potentially serious problem in the bomb's design the fuse that ignited the bombs was a radar actuated proximity fuse that was supposed to detonate the bomb at eighteen hundred and ninety feet above the ground but on two occasions the fuse detonated its pumpkin bomb too soon once over wendover and once over the pacific the bombs detonated just after leaving the bombay at 31 000 feet the premature explosions did no damage to the planes but they caused some serious worry among the crews tibbetts made the last trip to washington in mid-july there it was decided that everything would be ready by the first week of august tibbetts flew back to tinian to oversee the final preparations for the mission on the morning of 26 july the cruiser uss indianapolis arrived at tinian to deliver the firing mechanism and a small slug of uranium for the atomic bomb the second slug of uranium was delivered by a b-29 from the united states halfway between guam and the leyte gulf in the early hours of july 30 the indianapolis was hit by two japanese torpedoes the nearly 900 men who went into the water on july 30 only 317 were rescued it was the worst sea disaster in the history of the us navy back on tinian the technicians continued to prepare what some were calling the device its final assembly would be done on the day before the mission we never called an atomic bomb at all how many people in the organization knew enough about atomic energy at that time to guess that we were working on an atomic bomb as beyond me but if you did if you guessed it you didn't talk about it because if you did you would get sent off the illusions there's no place like that [Music] thank you [Music] fat man like the atomic bomb tested at alamogordo new mexico in mid-july was an implosion-type plutonium bomb a sphere of shaped explosive charges surrounded a smaller sphere of radioactive plutonium when the explosive charges detonated the pressure of the explosion compressed the plutonium sphere to critical mass setting off an uncontrolled atomic reaction [Music] fat man would be the second atomic bomb used in combat the bomb that would be dropped on hiroshima was of a different type than the one tested in new mexico this was a rifle type bomb in which one slug of uranium would be fired into another the pressure of their impact would push both slugs of uranium to critical mass and trigger the explosion little boy was a simpler design and the scientists considered it more reliable than the implosion type fat man but in fact a rifle type atomic bomb like little boy had never been tested its first use as a weapon would also be its first trial run [Music] america china and britain sent the so-called potsdam proclamation to japan on 26 july surrender it said or face prompt and utter destruction the japanese ignored it three days later general carl tui spatz arrived on tinion to take command of the u.s strategic forces in the pacific he brought with him a signed order from general leslie groves the head of the manhattan project the order authorized the 509th composite group to quote deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 august 1945 unquote the target was to be one of four cities hiroshima kokura negata or nagasaki paul tibbetts favored hiroshima in a handwritten note on the margin of the order president truman wrote quote release when ready but not sooner than august 2. unquote truman was meeting in potsdam germany with allied leaders churchill and stalin in early august and did not want the bomb dropped until that meeting was over i was never challenged nobody ever asked me uh can i drop the bomb or you know have you made the decision who's going to drop it if they had i told them yes decision made the first day i heard about that's going to be me colonel paul tibbetts would fly the first atomic bomb mission with a hand-picked crew captain bob lewis age 25 from richfield park new jersey would be tibbetts co-pilot lewis had often commanded the aircraft when tibbetts was busy with other duties theodore dutch van kirk navigator age 24 from north umberland pennsylvania and major tom farabe bombadier age 24 from mocksville north carolina both men had been part of tibbetts regular b-17 flight crew in england tom fairby was the best poker player i ever saw in the army and that's saying a lot best crap shooter too we met in the nose of a b-17 we were best friends until he died captain william d parsons age 44 from chicago was a u.s navy ordinance expert who had worked on the manhattan project he would be responsible for arming and monitoring the atomic bomb during the flight to japan he was assisted by lieutenant morris r jepson 23 of logan utah tech sergeant wyatt dusenberry was the enola gays flight engineer he had flown in b-17s with tibbetts jose and berry could really get more out of engines than anybody else he was a master at engine and that sort of thing i'm best flight engineer i resolved lieutenant jacob besser 24 of baltimore maryland was a radar specialist these bombs operated on radar proximity fuses they had to very accurately measure their height above the ground to get their explosion if the japanese had gotten on to the frequency on which they had operated they could have exploded the bombs in the airplane we didn't think that was a very good idea so we took jake along and jake was our radar is expert filling out the enola gays 12-man crew were pfc robert chamard assistant flight engineer sergeant joe stobourek radar operator pfc richard nelson radio operator and tech sergeant bob karen tail gunner during the first few days of august tibbetts gave considerable thought to a name for his airplane he had no doubt that the first atomic bomber would become a celebrity of sorts and the current identifier plane number 82 didn't sound very heroic he finally decided to name the plane after his mother anola gay tibbetts she was a strong caring woman who had much influence on tibbetts life and values bombardier tom farabe and navigator dutch van kirk both knew tibbett's mother and both heartily agreed with his choice on the third of august the final order came from general curtis lemay who commanded all b-29 operations in the pacific the official order for special bombing mission number 13 listed hiroshima as the primary target followed by kakuru and nagasaki if the number 13 worried any of the crew they never mentioned it over the next few days tibbetts and farabi poured over huge aerial photographs of the three targets especially hiroshima farabe chose a landmark east of the city as his initial point where he would begin his bomb run for the aiming point he chose a bridge in the center of hiroshima of the many bridges across the ota river the t-shaped aeoe bridge would be the easiest to spot from 31 000 feet above the city with orders to drop the atomic bomb only if the target were visible tibbetts wanted to be sure of the weather over each city not content to rely on long-distance weather forecasts he decided to send three b-29s ahead as weather reconnaissance planes the planes would leave tinion about an hour before the enola gay they would fly over the primary target and the two alternates and report on weather conditions three other b-29s would leave tinian with the enola gay one carried scientific instruments to measure the intensity of the atomic explosion another carried cameras to photograph the mission and the blast the third b-29 was a backup plane it would follow the enola gay to iwo jima about halfway to japan there it would land and wait if the enola gay had mechanical problems on the way to japan tibbetts would return to iwo jima transfer his crew and the atomic bomb to the backup b-29 and complete the mission [Music] on the morning of the 5th of august 1945 the forecasters said the weather looked good for a mission the next day final preparations went into high gear the enola gay was moved to a loading pit while the bomber crew attended a mission briefing by noon the atomic bomb was loaded in the b-29s specially modified bombay and then they told us to go get some sleep how they expected to tell you you're going to draw and go out and drop the first atomic bomb which might blow up the airplane and go get some sleep is absolutely beyond me i know tim is in sleep i knew fair we didn't sleep because we were all three in the same poker game and i don't know who won it was that bad the crews of the three strike planes were summoned again about 11 pm they came and got us final briefing religious weather information all that sort of stuff air sea rescue everything of that type and then over to the final breakfast and i don't i do know i remember vividly what we had for the final breakfast ball tibbetts love pineapple fritters i hated the damn things we had pineapple fritters for breakfast had more that evening i should say the japanese were known to be torturing b-29 crewmen who had been shot down over japan as tibbetts left the mess hall the flight surgeon handed him a small pill box containing 12 cyanide capsules tibbetts gave one of the capsules to parsons but kept the rest to be handed out only in an emergency paul tibbetts made it clear to the crew that if the plane was shot down each man should decide on his own whether or not to commit suicide to avoid capture the crew arrived at the flight line about 1 45 a.m to find the enola gay bathed in flood lights general groves wanted the plane's departure from tinian to be recorded on film we got trucks went down the airplane and i think we all got down there we were all surprised because the plane was lit up by keg lights like a it was like a hollywood premiere for having sex dick nelson who comes in southern california said ah looks more like a supermarket opening to me point i want to make if all the interviewing is being done all the pictures are being taken and everything and that that were being done by the manhattan project there was no media on the island at all the crew boarded the aircraft and went carefully through their checklists no one wanted to make the mistake that would jeopardize the mission we were very heavily loaded on takeoff we were about 250 000 max gross weight normal max gross weight of obese 129 over there at that particular time was about 235 35 000. at 2 45 a.m tibbetts began his takeoff roll on tinian's 8 000 foot runway as the aircraft reached 140 knots its normal takeoff speed co-pilot bob lewis reached for the control yoke i was confident that this was the only way to do it so that i could control with the tail if i had to so when i'm going down there and i kept it past that magic 140 that you louis was used to he started to grab the yoke and pull back on it he's going to lift it off and i told him i said keep your goddamn hands off of that yoke i'm flying this airplane and he was in charge absolutely no that was paul tibbetts on an airplane i don't know what speed we're coming off on but i know we used every damn foot of that runway at two minute intervals the camera plane and instrument plane took off behind tibbetts followed by the backup b-29 [Music] conventional bombs were usually armed on the ground but if the enola gay were to crash on takeoff parsons worried that a fire could set off the atomic bomb's black powder trigger as the enola gay reached its initial cruising altitude of 4 700 feet deep parsons and lieutenant jepsen climbed into the bombay to arm the atomic bomb while jepson held a flashlight parsons inserted a small slug of uranium and a small explosive charge that would fire one uranium slug into another and trigger the atomic explosion i was worried to beat hell the fact that we had an atom bomb behind me right behind me it didn't concern me a whole lot the fact that deep portion was back there in the bombay fooling of black powder that worried me and because i knew what black powder would do [Music] with the arming task completed the crew relaxed many of them slept making up for the sleepless days leading up to the mission the six-hour flight to japan seemed routine and uncomplicated in spite of their unique payload use celestial navigation to get up to iwo jima and if you get lost between iwo jima and japan you are the lousiest navigator in the world i'm sure there's some people have done it already but not many because you had a volcanic island sticking up above the ocean and you could pick them up on radar and lead your way right in at 5 55 a.m tinian time the crew cited iwo jima halfway to the target the backup airplane a b-29 named top secret landed there tibbetts circled the island once to allow the two other b-29s great artiste and an unnamed number 91 to form up on enola gay and the three planes headed for japan three hours away at about 7 45 a.m tinian time the enola gay climbed to 32 700 feet her intended bombing altitude half an hour later tibbetts received a coded message sent from major easterly the pilot of straight flush one of the b-29 weather reconnaissance planes the weather over hiroshima was suitable for a visual bomb strike the other two weather planes also sent messages the skies over nagasaki were clear but kokura was hidden under ground fog the skies over all three cities were empty of other allied aircraft orders kept them well clear of the possible targets about 9 00 am tinian time the city of hiroshima came into view its white buildings gleaming in the morning sun dutch van kirk's navigation was near perfect and the enola gay reached the initial point almost precisely on time tibbetts turned the plane left to a heading of 263 degrees to begin the three-minute bomb run we made the turn to the west we wanted a bomb on a heading of 270. i missed it and we got on a heading of 263 and we just went in and dropped the bomb bomb run was very long we were having conversations while we were on our bomb run and that i tom ferry turned around on me once and he said christ dutch if we'd have sat on a bomb run this long over europe we wouldn't be here well i said it's still on the target he says it's going right down the track he says nothing i can do you see when the bombardier is making his bomb run he's flying the airplane it's on automatic pilot everything of that type and bomb tom was extremely good at it an hour earlier the b-29 weather plane straight flush had set off air raid sirens in hiroshima but no fighters rose to attack it the japanese had no defense against high flying airplanes up until that time and we were going to be as high as we could get so we didn't expect any enemy action of any type on this particular mission and we didn't get any ten miles out bombardier tom farabee spotted his aiming point the t-shaped aeoe bridge at 90 seconds from bomb release tibbetts switched the autopilot and gave the plane to farabee [Music] [Music] the city of hiroshima was one of japan's principal seaports it was an important shipping point for soldiers and equipment it was also one of the landing points for the allied amphibious invasion that was planned for november 1945. it was the headquarters of the imperial second army the chigoku regional army and the imperial army marines there were large military supply depots and many small factories for military goods in this city of 420 000 people the enola gays pneumatic bombay doors opened automatically at 9 15 and 17 seconds tinian time the atomic bomb tumbled away its burden gone the enola gay pitched sharply upward tibbetts now had to fly the world's largest bomber as if it were a nimble fighter plane we made a right-hand turn 60 degree bank lost about 2000 feet in the turn pushed the throttles forward just ran like hell tail gunner bob karen felt like the last man in a wild game of crack the whip dutch van kirk recalls one particular thought as the plane sped away from the release site i hope it works because you know it had never been dropped before two days before the fusing mechanism didn't work i think if i'd have been better betting man i would have bet before we dropped that bomb but it's going to be a dud so everything with everybody was waiting to see whether it did explode and didn't work and then suddenly we saw the bright flash in the airplane hallelujah it had worked after we were certain we weren't going to get any more shockwaves we turned around to look what had happened the first thing we saw was that mushroom-shaped cloud all different colors within the base of that cloud and on top of it was a mushroom you could see it was up well above our altitude already i guess yeah 40 000 going higher and then as we turn on around and everything we could see the city of hiroshima and we can make absolutely no visual observation because the entire city was covered with thick black smoke and everything you want the description of it i say it looked like a pot of boiling oil down there the initial fireball incinerated or vaporized everything in the immediate area of the blast beyond that buildings were flattened then set on fire four square miles of the central city were destroyed about 60 percent of the city's area the firestorm that erupted after the blast widened the destruction estimates put the human toll at 60 to 80 000 dead and an equal number injured in tokyo many in the civilian government argued for surrender the russians were poised to attack manchuria the allied blockade was strangling japan there were food shortages victory was no longer possible but japan's military leaders vowed to continue the war america some said had no more atomic bombs on 9 august a b-29 called boxcar piloted by major charles sweeney dropped an atomic bomb on nagasaki the mission was flawed the bomb missed its target by nearly half a mile causing less destruction than at hiroshima that same day the russians invaded manchuria two days later a group of japanese military commanders met in a plot to seize the government and continue the war the plot failed when senior officers refused to join the coup d'etat on 14 august more than 1 000 american army and navy bombers hit japanese cities faced with the total destruction of his nation the emperor ordered the unconditional surrender of japan [Music] the atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki changed the nature of warfare forever atomic weapons elevated the role of the strategic bomber and helped give birth to the u.s air force as a separate service they shaped much of the military and political landscape of the second half of the 20th century the decision to use atomic bombs on japan made jointly by truman and churchill has remained controversial but one fact cannot be disputed the use of the bombs was intended first and foremost to end as quickly as possible a terrible war against a ruthless enemy who was determined never to surrender let me say emphatically that there's no way in those days that i could have even considered not one to do it i was anxious to do it i wanted to do everything that i could to subdue japan and in other words i wanted to kill the bastards that was the attitude of the united states in those years the battle of okinawa in early 1945 produced 50 000 allied casualties and up to 150 000 japanese casualties if japan fought on allied leaders feared a score or more of okinawa's to be fought all over asia if you were over there in around tinney and saipan guam at that particular time you knew that an invasion was going to be have a lot of casualties because they are building hospitals all over those islands we wanted a war to be over we want to stop the killing the atomic bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki was instrumental in ending the second world war tibbetts his crew more than a million american servicemen and women and the american public were overwhelmingly grateful for the peace that followed and the memory of hiroshima and nagasaki has helped to ensure that such weapons have never again been used in anger i just like to say to all people that before you make any say anything critical about what we did and the casualties we caused or anything of that type study the history of the war study the history of that people find out what was really going on back in those days and then bake up your mind [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] desperate times call for desperate measures in the most desperate hours of world war ii 80 volunteers stepped forward to try that which had never been done before to launch one of the most daring raids in aerial combat history by flying fully loaded medium-range bombers from the deck of an aircraft carrier it was a single mission of only 16 bombers its primary objective was to raise the morale of a nation stunned by the surprise attacks and sweeping conquests launched by the japanese in december of 1941 by doing what was thought to be impossible at the time bombing the japanese home islands as fate would have it when they left the deck of that carrier in the nearly gale force winds of an early april morning the doolittle tokyo raiders would do far more than boost morale they would trigger a series of tactical errors by the japanese high command errors destined to change the outcome of world war ii in the pacific 80 men 68 years later only six of them are still with us yet their tradition dictates that all 80 of them gather either in body or spirit every year on the anniversary of that heroic and historic mission [Music] richard e cole 95 from dayton ohio is the oldest surviving raider he was jimmy doolittle's co-pilot in the first plane to take off from the deck of the uss hornet tom griffin from green bay wisconsin was the navigator on raider airplane number nine following the raid he was shot down in europe and spent nearly two years in a german prison camp david thatcher a bridger montana is one of two raiders awarded the silver star for distinguished gallantry in action for actions they took to save the lives of the seriously injured crew members aboard his b-25 airplane number seven he is now 89 years old [Music] robert height the co-pilot of airplane number 16 was captured by the japanese after the raid and sentenced to death he was held for 40 months until liberated by american troops on august 20 1945. he was born in odell texas four men from the heartland the northern plains the mountain west and the southwest men whose memories of an america united by the common cause of dire peril and those gained by flying a mission that would lift the nation's sagging spirits and turn the tide of war are as vivid today as they were in april 1942 when we get together it seems like the raid was yesterday it's great to see the ones that are still living and we pay homage to the ones that have passed on i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] is [Music] we interrupt this broadcast bring with this important bulletin from the united press flash washington the white house announces japanese attack on pearl harbor [Music] in december of 1941 dick cole was a young second lieutenant in the army air corps reserves assigned to the 17th bomb group at pendleton oregon on friday the 5th of december he had flown to march field near riverside california on a three-day pass we're given what they used to call an open post where you get like a three-day pass we were in hollywood at the time the japanese attacked pearl harbor on getting the notice that that had taken place we were immediately reported back to march field and took off and went back to pendleton and from pendleton they divided the group up and we went on submarine patrol flying out of seattle portland everett washington and we did that until about the first or second week of february while tom griffin was majoring in political science at the university of alabama he went through the rotc program after graduation he spent a year with an anti-aircraft unit based at fort sheridan illinois in 1940 he transferred to the army air corps and was trained in celestial navigation in january of 1941 he too was assigned to camp pendleton oregon they didn't have room for the officers out at the field at pendleton so we went into town and the townspeople rented bedrooms to quite a number of the air force officers and somebody came in about 3 30 in the afternoon and came rushing in the room and said isn't it awful and we said what do you mean awful they told us about this attack on pearl harbor that's the first we knew that it's an odd thing that night we went downtown and went to a movie theater there's a movie on we wanted to see and while we were watching it they stopped the movie and a man came up on the stage and said all airmen from the field are ordered to report to the field immediately but we got up and departed and went back out to the field where our colonel gave us a little pep talk about what had happened and what was going to be expected of us you know that sort of thing so that was my pearl harbor day after graduating from spring lake high school in earth texas in 1937 and completing three years of college robert height enlisted as an aviation cadet at lubbock texas on september 9 1940 he got his pilot's wings on may 29 1941. he too was assigned to the 17th bomb group at pendleton when pearl harbor was attacked david thatcher was 19 years old when he went from his father's dairy farm in billings montana to missoula to enlist in the u.s army because he wanted to get away from derry for a while he was in airplane mechanics school in lincoln nebraska on december 7 1941. there was a 20 picked from the 17th group five from each of the four squadrons that went there to go to airport mechanics school so some of us were in the movie then it was sunday so when they come out of the movie in the afternoon we heard it was it had been palmed no one expected something like that the december 7th 1941 was a sunday and sunday's in flying school when i was in advanced flying training at victoria texas three or four of us decided to go downtown victoria and have lunch down there instead of eating in the mess hall the base we were on was brand new we had the boqs were were primitive and the mess hall was not in good shape and so we took the chance to go and get a nice lunch downtown well one of the fellas had a car and we were allowed to have them by that time in our training if you're about to graduate you could buy a car if you had the money to do it and he had a radio in it which i'd never seen before in an automobile and we were riding around getting back to the base and the thing said that there was something had happened in hawaii and we just shrugged ours we didn't know what it was we never really didn't know much about hawaii [Music] [Applause] cv glides have been the official historian of the doolittle raider association since 1972. he has authored three books on the raid and assisted jimmy doolittle in writing his autobiography he was also a world war ii army air corps pilot next morning on monday morning and we all went to the base for our flying training and always there was a notice for each of our flights as to what the flying was going to be today and the instructor had formation flying gunnery and he said in big letters he had written on the bottom of it there's a war on get on the ball follow me well that's you know that was about the the norm that was the announcement that we got that there was a war on we were on wartime well our job was to follow him and that's what we did that that day we went down the gunnery range we did our gunnery and then instead of coming back to victoria he headed out to the caribbean and while i was sitting there flying my formation it was sick ship formation and i wonder why we're going out to golf here we're not supposed to go into golf we don't have life jackets or anything we followed him briefly of course and he finally made a turn went back to victoria when he got on the ground one of them had the nerve to ask us sir were we lost after after gunnery at matagorda island and he said we were supposed to look for submarines and he went back and now i think we thought he was kidding and we really didn't understand what was going on but we kept on with our training that's all we were supposed to do in his now memorialized speech to congress on december 8 1941 asking for a declaration of war franklin d roosevelt called the attack on pearl harbor unprovoked and dastardly in congress only montana congresswoman jeanette rankin the first woman to be elected to the united states house of representatives voted against entry into world war ii the treachery and success of the pearl harbor attack on december 7th 1941 wasn't the only bad news americans had to process yesterday [Music] the japanese government also launched an attack against malaya last night japanese forces attacked hong kong night japanese forces attacked guam last night japanese forces attacked the philippine islands last night the japanese attacked wake island and this morning the japanese attacked midway island three days later on december 11th germany and italy declared war on the united states in an instant the hope of avoiding war held so fervently in so many american hearts was pulverized by a coordinated multi-front onslaught that had been years in the planning after pearl harbor there's nothing but bad news coming the japanese with a very small army i mean we look back today and wonder how they could possibly have done what they did with the number of troops they employed but they employed them in such a clever manner in joint operations the japanese army and navy which are infamous for not cooperating were able to cooperate on this sort of island-hopping base hopping trip down through indochina down to singapore tom griffin of cincinnati ohio was the navigator on the ninth airplane to take off from the deck of the uss hornet in the doolittle raid the doolittle raid was so important because it was the first offensive action of our forces against the enemy we were in this world war and our allies in russia were being driven back at this time towards their principal cities of stalingrad and leningrad and moscow in north africa the british were being driven back by rommel and his german forces back toward cairo things were looking bad there in the atlantic ocean german submarines were seeking our shipping wholesale we didn't have the organization at that time to go after them successfully we're losing all kinds of shipping in the pacific after the japanese attack on pearl harbor they went from one victory to another they took over places like guam and they went down into the uh into the philippines and put a large army in the philippines and we're in the process of defeating our forces there that was the spring time of 42. on december 7 1941 a complete sense of betrayal consumed millions of americans who had been arguing and demonstrating against america's entry into wars in either europe or the pacific many prominent americans such as aviation hero charles lindbergh general robert e wood of sears roebuck frank lloyd wright robert r mccormick of the chicago tribune and even future presidents john f kennedy and gerald ford became active in organizations such as the america first committee that strongly advocated america's neutrality we cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction the roosevelt administration is the third powerful group which has been carrying this country toward war [Applause] [Music] the undeclared acts of war perpetrated by japan on the 7th and 8th of december 1941 brought the isolationist movement in the united states to a swift and bitter end four days after the pearl harbor attack the america first committee dissolved itself virtually overnight america found itself at war on two fronts no one was more determined to strike back at japan than president roosevelt almost two weeks to the hour after the pearl harbor attack those responsible for planning and directing the mobilization of the country's military forces met with the president in his white house study [Music] general george c marshall was roosevelt's army chief of staff general henry h happ arnold was the chief of staff of the army air forces admiral ernest j king served as chief of naval operations on this day the trio would be joined by harry hopkins president roosevelt's special advisor admiral harold r stark henry stimson secretary of war and secretary of the navy frank knox well i guess the best way to get a joint mission is to have it come from the commander-in-chief and president roosevelt was anxious to have some retribution he wanted to know the people the united states know that we weren't flat on our backs and we could do something this is early in december maybe two weeks after pearl harbor [Music] roosevelt emphasized that he wanted a bombing raid on the home islands of japan as soon as possible this request repeated over and over again in the weeks following was transmitted to the respective staffs of marshall king and arnold each time they returned to their offices the biggest obstacle to a retaliatory bombing mission was that no working allied air base was close enough to japan to allow even our longest range bombers to get there ironically the flash of insight that led to the doolittle raid did not come from an aviator but a navy submariner captain francis lowe the operations officer on the staff of admiral ernest j king on a trip to the naval yard at norfolk virginia notice that the army air corps twin engine bombers were making passes over an aircraft carrier silhouette which had been painted on the runway in a rare interview following the war lo gave his account of what he saw i had occasion to fly from washington to norfolk to look into the redness of one of our new carriers and as we took off from the airstrip to return to washington and was circling to gain altitude i noticed down below me the outline of a coward deck this was not unusual because we had them painted on many landing fields so that young aviators were going to caliers would learn how small such a deck was but also making passes or appearing to make passes over this carrier deck were some twin-engine bombers that looked like b-25s or b-26s here was born i would say the the concept of the raid one might call it fortuitous association because i never would have thought of it had i not seen the bombers passing over the cowardly deck admiral king had been using the uss vixen a gunboat moored at the washington shipyard as his flagship and second office several of his staff were working and living aboard the ship on the evening of january 10 1942 after king had retired to his cabin lowe decided to share his fortuitous association king reportedly had a stern demeanor and was not easily approachable low was not an aviator he did not know how the admiral would receive his idea lo told king that though navy fighters had an operating radius of only 300 miles off an aircraft carrier in norfolk he had observed twin-engine army bombers which had a much greater range practicing over the carrier profile on the runway what if they could actually operate off a carrier what if the navy could give the long-range army air corps bombers a ride within range of the japanese home islands setting them up for a sea based strike on january 10 1942 while francis lowe was sharing his ideas with admiral king in washington dc tom griffin dick cole david thatcher robert height and the rest of the 17th bombardment group were flying out of tacoma washington and portland oregon patrolling for threats to the west coast of the united states at the time of pearl harbor we spent the next six weeks our group flying out from tacoma washington in portland oregon looking for whatever might show up the japanese had attacked pearl harbor and as far as we knew they would come and attack the west coast of america but of course they had other plans they thought they had done enough damage and they they could go elsewhere in the pacific and more or less take over the pacific which they did back in washington somewhat to francis lowe's surprise admiral king directed him to talk to captain donald duncan king's air operations officer the very next morning about his idea he added sternly don't tell anyone about this thank you [Music] hey [Music] in the wake of the attack on pearl harbor president roosevelt pressed the u.s military for a plan to strike back against the japanese homeland francis lowe a navy captain after watching twin engine bombers making passes over the outline of an aircraft carrier on a runway near norfolk virginia suggested a bombing strike might be possible from the deck of a carrier admiral king chief of naval operations told lowe to explore the idea with donald duncan his air operations officer and he told him something else don't tell anyone about this low had two pertinent questions for duncan first can an army medium-range bomber land aboard a carrier second can a land-based bomber loaded with bombs and crew take off from a carrier deck the answer to the first question was a quick no the risk of landing airplanes that size on a carrier was too high but even if it were possible the elevator would not be able to get the bombers below decks to make room for other landings but a carrier takeoff that was another matter in this rare archival footage duncan recalls being contacted by low when captain lowe the operations officer on admiral king's staff told me that he and the animal had been discussing the possibility of launching army bombers from carrier decks to hit japan and told me that the ammo wanted me to investigate it and write up a concept of operation checked over the various types of army bombers that we might use and came up with the answer that the b-25 was probably the best bet they looked at a bunch of airplanes the b-18 which was a terrible airplane for a bombing mission and the b-26 which had a suspect reputation but the b-25 seemed to fill the bill the north american b-25 when the b-25 came about it was like a kick in the pants as far as maneuverability and speed and fun to fly the mitchell b-25 was one of the iconic success stories of world war ii by the end of its production nearly 10 000 various models of it had been built it was used by the allied air forces in every theater of the war it served across four decades the b-25 is developed by north american aviation with a very easy airplane to fly i it was far easier to fly than the marauder the b-26 marauder had a much lower wing loading and with the lower wing load it could get off in shorter distances and marauder needed much longer runways had to land a lot faster air speeds but you could take a young pilot right out of advanced training with a couple hundred hours in his logbook put him on b25 very quickly transition to learn his combat skills and send them off to war as a competent combat pilot [Music] the b-25 properly modified could carry two thousand pounds of bombs and make a two thousand mile flight if extra gas tanks were installed normally it would take at least 1200 feet of runway with that kind of load if it were lightened however it might be made to leap off in a little over a third of that distance especially with a forward speed of a carrier and a wind of about 25 knots low and duncan knew a test would be required under normal circumstances such a test flight would not be difficult to conduct but these were not normal circumstances both men had admiral king's words ringing in their ears don't mention this to another soul on january 31st 1942 captain duncan flew to norfolk the uss hornet the navy's newest aircraft carrier was due there to be readied for her first mission he went aboard the hornet the afternoon of february first and explained the test to mark a mitcher the hornet's skipper duncan had made arrangement with hap arnold's office to have three b-25s waiting when the carrier arrived the army air corps chose lieutenant john fitzgerald to head the test crews he was a 1940 graduate of the advanced flying school with over 400 hours in b-25s in norfolk fitzgerald and his fellow pilots made several practice runs at an auxiliary airfield before going aboard the carrier one of the test airplanes lost an engine during these drills leaving only the two planes flown by fitzgerald and lieutenant james f mccarthy to make the historic first takeoffs of army air corps multi-engine bombers from a navy ship the surprising performance of the b-25 nearly led to disaster when the take-offs were attempted fitzgerald's plane left off the deck so quickly and so high its right wing nearly flew into the tower that overhung the flight deck fitzgerald later recalled i was surprised to observe that we had been provided almost 500 feet of usable deck and that the plane's air speed indicator showed about 45 miles per hour just sitting there when i got the go signal i let the brakes off and was almost immediately airborne one thing that worried me though was the projection of the island out over the flight deck the wing of my plane rose so rapidly that i thought i was going to strike this projection i pushed the control column forward and the wing just barely passed underneath i climbed and circled back to watch lieutenant mccarthy take off [Music] it was now established that the b-25 bombers could indeed take off from a carrier deck but what would happen when they were weighted with a full crew bombs and an expanded fuel load that question would soon become the sole focus of the diminutive brilliant man whose name would eventually be memorialized by this mission that changed the war so immediately following the attack on the u.s fleet at pearl harbor hawaii president franklin d roosevelt began pressing his military leadership for a plan to conduct a retaliatory airstrike against the japanese homelands with no allied air base within striking distance of japan two naval officers on admiral king's staff had successfully tested the takeoff of b-25 bombers from the deck of an aircraft carrier it was something never before tried in the history of aerial warfare to plan the mission and train the crews chief of staff of the army air force's henry happ arnold made a surprise choice he turned to a man who had once resigned his army air corps commission in order to enter private business he chose one of america's most famous aviators james h doolittle in doing so arnold tapped a man who is not only a brilliant aviation tactician history would bear witness that he also identified one of the most revered and visionary leaders of the modern american military it was very difficult to believe when the rumors started then it was led by jimmy doolittle jimmy doolittle the racing pilot another impossibility it just seemed like it was a false rumor but it took place and all of these impossibility things happened through the leadership the planning of the then lieutenant colonel jimmy doolittle former racing pilot devil may care couldn't care less we go it was not that way he was master of the calculated risk as a kid growing up in dayton ohio dick cole used to ride his bicycle to a levee above mccook field to watch the army air corps test pilots including jimmy doolittle some of the old pilots like mccrady doodle and stats flew in and out of there when they were testing air-to-air rear fueling and they flew for 26 days something like that but anyway that was one of the the pastimes that i had when i was a kid for something like this there's an element of show in it there's an element of uh innovation and they they selected the guy who could combine leadership and innovation and great flying characteristics in jimmy doolittle and oddly enough sort of on the outs jimmy doolittle at the time had rejoined the air force but he had gotten out because after i think was 11 years as the first lieutenant he decided he had to make some money for his family and got out during the 30s and to the hardcore who would say to him including general arnold uh that wasn't the thing to do you know he he was sort of not in the best favor at the time james harold doolittle was born in alameda california on december 14 1896 his father was a carpenter who went to alaska in search of gold after joining his father in gnome at age 11 doolittle moved with his mother to los angeles in 1917 at the age of 21 doolittle who had had a brief career as a professional boxer enlisted in the army signal enlisted reserve corps to train as a pilot he was quickly promoted to lieutenant he served in the army air corps from 1917 to 1930 when he became a major in the army air corps reserves [Music] flying was jimmy doolittle's passion in 1922 he made the first cross-country crossing in under 24 hours [Applause] [Music] [Music] he became the first person to win all major aviation racing trophies he won the schneider trophy in 1925 and the bendix trophy in 1931. in 1932 he won the thompson trophy flying a closed course race in cleveland an average of 252 miles per hour in the gb r1 racer doolittle made aviation history on september 24th 1929 when he became the first person to take off fly and land an airplane entirely by instruments he flew a 15-minute course around mitchell field on long island in a modified ny2 husky in his personal logbook he modestly referred to the watershed accomplishment as a blind flying exhibition after leaving the military in 1930 doolittle went to work for shell oil corporation to establish an aeronautical branch in this capacity he was given credit for leading the company to develop a hundred octane fuel for aviation between the two world wars the army air corps had been relegated to the job of flying the mail do little knew that it was falling behind the rest of the world's flying forces new more powerful engines were needed but there was no way to efficiently fuel them in his 1991 autobiography doolittle wrote i was concerned that we were falling behind other nations in military aeronautics and that we should be looking forward to the development of more powerful engines for warplanes so that heavier loads could be carried faster the army air corps was not even a third-rate air force compared with the air forces of other nations at doolittle's urging shell made the first delivery of a hundred octane rated fuel to the army air corps for test purposes in 1934 [Music] when doolittle traveled to germany on shell business he found a nation bristling with militarism he saw boy scout troops that had been converted to hitler youth drilling as soldiers and singing nazi war songs he met german pilots who openly talked of the inevitability of war in europe and who bluntly asked him what the united states would do about it [Music] jimmy doolittle knew half arnold the chief of the army air force as well arnold had been his commanding officer at rockwell field near san diego following world war one doolittle visited arnold and told him he believed that america's involvement in the war in europe was inevitable [Music] september 1st 1939 two weeks after doolittle's conversation with arnold the germans marched into poland and one thousand four hundred luftwaffe planes bombed and strafed a stunned population in may of 1940 the german blitzkrieg extended into the netherlands belgium and france on the 16th of may in a speech before congress president roosevelt called for a program that would eventually produce at least 50 000 airplanes a year [Music] a little over two weeks after that on june 4th 1940 ira aker general arnold's executive officer wrote jimmy doolittle asking him to return to active duty on july 1st at 44 years of age jimmy doolittle became a u.s army air corps officer for the second time beginning a journey whose outcome was far from certain jimmy doolittle was a tremendous man a big man in a little man's body you might say uh very intelligent never seemed to have any element of fear in his makeup whatsoever you know he had he had occasion to fly the wings off of two planes he had to bail out of in the 1920s those old crates and then of course over china he bailed out again and we thought boy that old man 46 years old bailed out of aircraft but he was a he knew no fear and he was just an outstanding leader in every respect well i think people don't realize that jimmy doolittle had a doctorate from mit that he had earned doctor of science degree in aeronautical engineering this man was an educated individual he had a master's a bachelor's of masters and then a doctorate everybody knew who general doodle was that he was one of the famous pilots and he was going to be the leader of our raid so everybody in our outfit volunteered to go with jimmy doodle doolittle re-entered the air corps as a major his initial assignments seem to be directly related to president roosevelt's goal to make the united states the arsenal of democracy hap arnold knew that doolittle's technical knowledge and industrial experience uniquely qualified him to play a key role in the conversion of domestic manufacturing to wartime production captains lowe and duncan brought the concept of the raid to hap arnold on january 17th the general immediately sent for jimmy doolittle he began with a single question what airplane have we got that could take off in five hundred feet with a two thousand pound bomb load and fly two thousand miles a day later doolittle independently arrived at the same conclusion as had low and duncan the b-25 was the only alternative arnold briefed doolittle on the concept of the raid and added jim i need someone to take this project over get the planes modified and train the crews on january 2nd 1942 japan captured manila in the philippines on january 12th japan invaded burma on january 20th germany held the von say conference in a berlin suburb to find a final solution for the jews on january 25th japan invaded the solomons in the 13th century mongolian invaders were driven back from japan not by defenses but by the japanese typhoon season since that time the militarists in japan had told the people that a kamikaze or divine wind protected their nation [Music] as the japanese swept through the pacific with frightening speed this long-held belief in a national invincibility and the invulnerability of the home islands was mightily reinforced what the japanese high command did not know was a half a world away an aeronautical genius with a gift for leadership and 80 brave souls who had come under his command had a bold plan to shatter that facade in doing so they would receive a life-saving lift from a divine wind of their own a lift that would allow them to complete a mission that changed the war when they announced that they wanted volunteers the whole group volunteered including the group commander and everybody in the 17th while we were in the 1712 group wanted to go with jimmy doodle originally we were told to take off in the evening along japan at night and be over reach china the next morning but it didn't turn out that way you don't take off on a mission like this without a light at the end of the tunnel we all thought that somehow we get out of it [Music] [Music] since the u.s entry into world war ii on december 8 1941 the conflict had gone badly on every front on january 2nd 1942 japan captured manila in the philippines on january 12th japan invaded burma germany had aligned itself with japan and declared war on the united states [Applause] on january 25th japan invaded the solomons america was desperate to do something to slow the access juggernaut president roosevelt knew that american morale was flagging he was interested in launching an aerial strike against japan's home islands americans wanted retribution for the sneak attack on pearl harbor military leaders wanted to demonstrate to the japanese high command that we had the ability to reach their civilian population in early january 1942 the navy and the army jointly conceived a daring plan to transport army air corps b-25 twin-engine bombers within striking distance of japan by aircraft carrier launching such a strike from a carrier had never been tried before the risk would be enormous to lead the mission chief of the army air force's henry h happ arnold tapped one of america's most famous aviators a man who had resigned his army air corps commission in 1930 but returned to active duty 10 years later at age 44 james h doolittle arnold wrote the selection of doolittle to lead the nearly suicidal mission was a natural one he was fearless technically brilliant a leader who not only could be counted upon to do a task himself if it were humanly possible but could impart that spirit to others do little would impart that spirit to men like tom griffin david thatcher dick cole robert height and 75 other members of the army air corps 17th bombardment group in order to execute the doolittle raid one of the most daring missions in the history of aerial combat a mission that was destined to change the outcome of world war ii i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] [Music] in the third week of january 1942 hap arnold told jimmy doolittle that he and navy admiral ernest king had decided on a target date of april 1 1942 for the departure of the aircraft carrier uss hornet for japan the navy's newest carrier would carry up to 20 of the mitchell b-25s dick cole eventually became doolittle's co-pilot on airplane number one that's one of the things that i think people should remember about colonel doolittle he actually assumed command of the mission on the 17th of january you know they had already pre-selected the launch date of 19 april and during that time he had to plan the mission get the troops get the airplanes get the supplies get them trained and so forth to meet that 19th of april deadline which he did in a couple days less than the 90 days in addition that he flew the mission doolittle would later write i had my verbal marching orders from hap and his authority to get the job done that was all i needed i called the assignment special aviation project number one after his re-enlistment in the army air corps doolittle was given exclusive use of a curtis p 40 warhawk in which to fly himself to his far-flung assignments now he wrote i took off in my p-40 for right field to lay the groundwork for the job ahead in the pacific northwest the 17th bombardment group had been flying submarine patrol since the attack on pearl harbor it would soon learn of its rendezvous with destiny in order to ensure that a minimum of 18 b-25s would be available for the mission to bomb japan do little requisition 24 of the group's planes volunteers for the mission would be sought from among the experienced crews assigned to those planes [Music] the 34th 37th and 95th squadrons of the 17th bombardment group commanded by lieutenant colonel william c mills and the associated 89th reconnaissance squadron under major john a hilger could be released most easily on february 3rd 1942 orders were teletyped to pendleton oregon to transfer without delay all planes and personnel of the 17th bomber group to columbia army air base in columbia south carolina mills and hilger were told to pass the word among the men that volunteers were being sought for an extremely hazardous mission the base wasn't complete yet we lived in tents and we were doing training missions because the word was that we were going to be go from there to africa and when we got there they said they were planting a very unusual dangerous raid and they wanted to warn us that it was going to be a dangerous raid and they wanted volunteers knowing that it was going to and the whole group volunteered i put my name on the list that was in front of the squadron ops on the way to columbia i had received my upgrade to first pilot and the pilot that upgraded me came around and wanted to know if we could go together as a crew well we had had our flight training in b25s and and we had heard that there was a very special mission being led by general james a student and everybody in in the air force at that time knew that james h doolittle was a very special pilot and had broken many records already and everybody in the 17th while we were in the 1712 group wanted to go with jimmy doodle i was uh just on the ground crew then and i wanted to do some flying so i was able to get on a crew and it just happened to be one of the crews that i picked doolittle requested an airbase where the selected crews could train in relative seclusion ideally the base should be near water so that navigators could practice over water navigation there should be facilities for gunnery training and an auxiliary field available where the pilots could practice short field takeoffs eglin field in western florida near fort walton beach was assigned there were all kind of theories or conjecture on what we're going to do most of us thought they were going to load us on an airplane on a carrier and take us to some pre-selected area where we would take off and go and land at a place and start fighting the war i'm sure that some buddy figured they would want to japan but i i wasn't one of my observant or whatever you want to call it the plan for the doolittle raid was to recover the bombers launched from the hornet at an airfield near chuchao in a sector of china controlled by generalissimo chiang kai-shek's nationalist chinese army if the navy could deliver the b-25 bombers within 450 miles of japan the mission would require them to cover approximately 1900 miles in the air to make it to china doolittle needed to increase the range of the airplanes to 2100 miles that meant extending the standard 1300 mile range of the b-25 bees flown by the raiders by some 800 miles since doolittle needed the modifications to the planes done before training began at eglin field he flew his p-40 to right field in dayton ohio almost immediately upon receiving responsibility for the mission there engineers made drawings for the installation of the fuel tanks and necessary plumbing on january 22nd 1942 he wrote a memo requesting 18 b-25bs be sent to mid-continent airlines in minneapolis minnesota to begin the work they took all the air all the weight off the airplane they could the bottom to it was removed because we knew we'd be flying so low that no enemy fighter could get underneath of us the lower turret on the b-25 was problematic under the best of circumstances there was trouble with activating the system that extended and retracted the device the attitude of the gunner and the operation of the site were difficult making it impossible to train gunners in time for the raid doolittle said a man could learn to play the violin good enough for carnegie hall before he could learn to fire that thing the turrets were removed they took all the oxygen equipment out to lighten the airplane we wouldn't be needing that took most of their radio equipment out because we had to fly silent and then they replaced that bottom turret that they removed with a 60-gallon leak-proof tank that's one that a bullet will go through and then it'll self-seal doolittle's plan was to avoid detection by flying the entire mission at extremely low altitudes below ten thousand feet oxygen for the crew is not required therefore the oxygen systems were considered expendable for the raid there's a crawl way between the top of the bomb bay and the top of the airplane just enough distance in there so a person can crawl through there they put a collapsible rubber tank in there and it held over 100 gallons and we still had room for four or 500 pound bombs below that tank in addition to the auxiliary tanks installed in the airplanes the plan called for 12 5 gallon gas tanks to be handed up to the engineers just before the b-25s departed the hornet's deck for japan how much difference could the 5-gallon gas cans make the doolittle raiders plan would use fuel mixture at rpm settings that minimize their fuel consumption throughout the mission at those settings the b-25s were likely flying a little more than 150 miles per hour using approximately 103 gallons of fuel each hour [Music] at that rate of consumption the 60 extra gallons contained in the gas cans would give the planes an additional 85 to 90 miles in the air that flying time could well be the difference between landing in a safe haven and ditching in open water off the coast as events unfolded for most of the raiders the gas cans would make the difference between life and death the tanks added in minnesota plus the portable gas cans would add an additional 425 gallons to the 646 gallons in the main wing tanks of each b-25 giving each of them 1141 total gallons of fuel it made the bombing mission and rendezvous landing in choo chow china possible but with very little fuel to spare if you stop to think about it they were taking 16 airplanes that were used to operating maybe over a four or 500 mile range and intending to fly them off a carrier which they were never designed to do if i'm a long distance to bomb japan and then flam and even equally long distance to get to safe bases in china i mean on the surface it sounds almost like what would later be called a kamikaze mission there are many many hazards and so the the risk was extremely high and and the risk was not only high to uh the pilots involved but to the nation there wasn't one of them that didn't know exactly how risky it was there was enormous risk but there were other reasons why the doolittle raid was designed the way it was top secret reasons [Music] to this day it is not widely understood that the u.s planned to launch a sea-based bombing raid on the home islands of japan in the spring of 1942 the doolittle raid was in fact a multi-purpose mission the raid was one piece of a five-part plan to establish a major fighting air command in the china burma india theater by mid-january of 1942 the air war plans division had a strategy to establish a new 10th air force in burma to support the allied effort to subdue the japanese invaders of the chinese mainland this plan to create a nucleus for a buildup of allied air power in the theater was called operation aquila point one of akilah called for the doolittle b-25s and crews to be flown to chung king following the raid then absorbed into the tenth air force [Music] 35 c-47s the military designation of the dc-3 were to be provided to create an aerial supply lifeline for the new air force 33 a-20 attack airplanes were to be ferried from the factory to the chinese air force and the pilots assigned to the 10th air force 23 heavy bombers b-24s were to be the first long-range bombers this unit was named the halpro group for its commander colonel harry a halverson its mission was to conduct long-range strategic attacks on japan from bases in china [Music] finally 51 p-40 fighters were to be assembled in west africa then ferried to china for claire chennault's flying tigers facing the looming deadline of an april 1st departure doolittle realized he needed help the aircraft needed major modifications targets and the flight plans to reach japan needed to be determined bomb sizes and weights had to be calculated and a plan to return crews safely home after refueling and delivering the b-25s to the chinese nationals needed finalizing he got the necessary procurement he got the pilots and the airplanes and got the thing organized in the 90 days that he had to do it in i don't think we could get that done today one key to maintaining secrecy during the planning of the mission was for doolittle to make all of the various arrangements on a face-to-face basis knowing he would be putting many hours on his personal p40 he solicited a recommendation for a deputy commander who could oversee the training being done at eglin field major john hilger was chosen hilger was described by doolittle as a no-nonsense perfectionist he would eventually be the pilot of the 14th b-25 on the raid since naval aviators had to be proficient in carrier takeoffs and landings major hilger suggested a navy flight instructor might be the right person to teach the army pilots carrier takeoff procedures pensacola flight instructor lieutenant henry l miller was chosen even though he had never seen a b-25 when miller got to the b-25 headquarters at eglint he met edward ski york who would go on to pilot airplane number eight davy jones who would pilot airplane number five and ross greening the pilot of airplane number 11. miller later recalled that the three seemed surprised when he introduced himself i didn't know that the whole operation was still a mystery to them he wrote the first thing the pilots had to learn how to get this b-25 mitchell bomber twin engine bomber up in the air in less than 500 feet now this this was training entirely different than they'd ever been trained they had to sit at a line with the full throttle full brakes full flaps let go of them and just bring that plane up in the air as soon as it would get airborne they first marked off the runway at a auxiliary field they didn't do it we did not make any of those fancy takeoffs at the main base because we didn't want anyone to see what we were doing there was an auxiliary field out in the timber and they marked off the runway and distances of over a thousand feet and then down to 800 and 600 and 400 feet and this was uh the distance that we were going to have on the deck of a carrier of course this plane now had no gas load of any mon they didn't have a bomb load it was in other words it was an empty plane when we were on the carrier with the we were going to have the addition of a big wind and so forth we hope so they had to learn to get this plane up in the air as soon as they could and over a period of two or three weeks practicing this the boys learned how to get this thing up there and it was entirely different from the training they had had on the plane flying it entirely differently [Music] [Music] on march 3rd 1942 less than a month before the targeted departure date for the mission doolittle landed at eglin field and assembled the 140 men who had been assigned to the project he came to edmond field after their the crews were gathered made a speech telling us what we would be doing but he would not he didn't discuss the destination or any part of it he said it was a dangerous mission and that he was satisfied with the training that we had received and that if anybody wanted to back out they could with no questions asked nobody backed out as a matter of fact when they announced that they wanted volunteers the whole group volunteered including the group commander and the fact that he was who he was manner of speaking he came across to you as somebody as that uh if uh if he's going to lead this mission well i'm going to go because he sounds like a good leader the first thing he emphasized to us was we were going to train for this very secret mission and if the word got out that what we were planning on doing we would never reach our target that was the main thing he emphasized to us secrecy don't talk anyplace off this base and i think our boys did a very good job of that all through the whole thing most of our people didn't know exactly where they were going to go they knew that we were going to take off the deck of a carrier but we did they didn't know there was something else the trainees from the 17th bombardment group did not know do little superiors considered him too valuable to send on such a high risk mission jimmy doolittle was appointed to plan the operation he was not scheduled to fly on the doolittle raid [Music] most of the dangers faced by the doolittle raiders were addressed through planning adapting and training for the unexpected however the most immediate threat to the cruise and the mission was the fact that none of the pilots or crews had ever done an actual takeoff from a carrier deck b-25 owner and pilot larry kelly explains to get airborne in 500 foot the dueler raiders had to use especially different technique than a normal takeoff technique once in position flaps fully down now taken off in a full flap down position gave you some advantage it lowered the stall speed then it deflected some thrust downward to give you some lift but flaps fully down in position brakes locked throttles up to full takeoff power watching the deck officer and as a duck officer then gauging the pitch of the deck would signal them to take off brakes would be released they would begin to take off roll pull back on the yoke raise the nose of the airplane and at 85 mile an hour then the airplane would start to fly away now the hornet was making 24 knots in the water that's 28 miles an hour approximately and the storm they were in was given 30 knots of wind and the hornet was steaming directly into the wind so the 30 knots of wind was an additional 35 mile an hour which gave them 68 miles an hour wind across the wings before they even began their takeoff now that means they only had to accelerate about 20 miles an hour to be able to fly away doolittle was able to get off in a 470 foot uh a deck distance 100 foot early but that only put them into the next immediately critical phase of flight they had to reach safe single engine air speed remember when they were taking off at 85 miles an hour indicated now they had to accelerate the airplane 60 mile an hour to reach a safe single engine speed safe single engine speed in a multi-engine airplane or in a twin-engine airplane like the b-25 is that air speed which is 145 mile an hour by which the airplane will remain controllable if you lose one engine the option of the pilot if you lose one engine and you've not reached a single air speed is reduced power and lander ditched straight ahead now in the raider situation after they had taken off at 85 mile an hour while they're accelerating to this 145 mile an hour if they lost an engine the pilot's only option was reduce power ditch the airplane straight ahead and risk being ran over by the hornet ted lawson and dean davenport had an especially difficult takeoff ted had his flaps down full because it already completed the checklist and the prop blast coming off actually began to push him across his wet deck remember they're on an aircraft carrier storm waters waves are crashing across the deck strong winds 68 mile an hour wind already so the prop blast actually started pushing him so he raised the flaps to reduce that sail effect the excitement of the moment ted starts taxing up into position using his white lines he's looking at the left and dean's looking out the right the flap lever is down here between in the center dean didn't know the flaps were up ted forgot the flaps were up he was signaled off he began his acceleration now he's in a situation where he needs an additional 20 mile an hour he's got to accelerate about 40 miles per hour before he's gonna have enough wind across the wings to be able to stay airborne if you ever seen the famous video they drop off the end of the deck they almost hit the water but he was able to slowly accelerate away and climb out if they had not had that 30 knots of wind across the deck they would have went off the end of the deck right into the water and been ran over by the hornet and this was really a test of flying to fly b-25s off a carrier was unheard of nobody would have contemplated it except for this emergency and in uh actual fact that you had to be a pretty good pilot to get it off have been easier to have lost one or two of those airplanes on takeoff from a carrier i mean there's no no question that unless they were properly trained and so you needed a man like doolittle who could see all the parameters of the mission and and then inculcate in the people following him the desire to make the mission though a highly experienced and decorated pilot jimmy doolittle subjected himself to lieutenant miller's dramatic flight training regiment he wrote i took hank miller's course because i was determined to go on the mission however if i couldn't pass the course or wasn't as good as the younger pilots i was going to go as a co-pilot hap arnold the head of the army air forces saw it otherwise he had no intention of risking the priceless asset known as james h doolittle on such a dangerous mission when doolittle raised the possibility arnold replied i'm sorry jim i need you here on my staff i can't afford to let you go on every mission you might help plan hap arnold said go and see general harmon and tell him that if he thinks you can go at a sword with me and at that time he ran down the hall and stuck his head in the door and i think his name was miff harmon a nickname but he said myth happ says that i can take the the mission if you think it's all right and uh myth said well he's a commander if it's or with him uh sorry with me right away he started to leave and he heard the squawk box say but hap i just told him he could go and that's how he got to be commander of the mission the kid on a bicycle who used to watch the great doolittle test flying airplanes in dayton ohio explains how he became his co-pilot on this legendary mission midway through our training the the pilot that we were with became ill and had to drop out the crew and i talked it over and they diplomatically elected me to go and talk to the operations [Music] officer like here you go which i did the operations officer was a captain ski orc he said well the old man is coming in this afternoon i'll cool you up with him and if you do okay well you got yourself a job i thought that i had not heard a captain talk about his commanding officer by calling him the old man and i thought well maybe that's not such a good idea now we get to fly with an old man and it turned out to be colonel doolittle dwight d eisenhower said in preparing for battle i have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable in planning an operation that had never before been attempted countless problems were envisioned and creative sometimes brilliant solutions for them abounded two such solutions came from the inventor and artist who became the pilot of airplane number 11 captain charles ross greening of carroll iowa greening called his first brainchild the mark twain bombsite it was a device he feared might be rejected because it was so simple the b-25s slated for the doolittle raid were outfitted with the expensive and highly classified norden bombsite such as the one shown on this b-17 flying fortress however the norton was designed to be highly effective at altitudes of four thousand feet or above the doolittle raid plan called for the bombs to be dropped at altitudes of fifteen hundred feet or lower ross greening later recalled i set about designing a new bomb site specifically for this mission one that could be effective at altitudes of 100 to 1500 feet using scrap metal and the shops at eglin field greening made this simple site as long as the bombardier knew the altitude and airspeed of the plane he could compute the angle at which the siding bar should be set when the target passed the line of sight bombs were released for low altitude bombing greening's site proved to be more accurate than the norden bomb site at the time norton bomb sites cost over ten thousand dollars a piece the materials for the mark twain site cost about 20 cents each all of the doolittle bombers were refitted the b-25s of 1942 were woefully short of defensive armament they were equipped with highly unsatisfactory top and bottom turrets both of which contained 50 caliber machine guns the decision had already been made to refit the bottom turret of the doolittle raid airplanes with an auxiliary fuel tank the nose contained a single 30 caliber machine gun that the bombardier had to move from one gun port to another the tail was completely unprotected the ingenious captain greening had another idea do little put it this way much credit must go to ross greening for solving our armament problems he suggested we installed two broomsticks in the tail and paint them black to simulate a tailgun position which would hopefully deter attacks from the rear i approved so this critical mission which required 16 b-25s two aircraft carriers eight destroyers four cruisers and two oilers was now highly dependent on 20 cent bomb sites and tail sections bristling with 50 caliber broomsticks [Music] less than a month before the doolittle raiders were going to board the hornet the maps that the cruise would require and the identifying of the targets in japan remained to be done tom griffin was the navigator on airplane number nine it just happened that i got a a a bit of a break i guess you'd say another fellow named davey jones and i in early february were sent up to washington d.c to work with air force intelligence now we worked with two men there they changed the lock on the door and they were told to just cooperate with us get what we were asking for and don't ask any questions so we spent about 10 days getting all the maps and charts of japan and china that 20 crews were going to need and we had to know the exact location of potential military and industrial targets that we might use so we could know just where to send our boys davey jones and i created these all this information these maps and charts and things and and it happened that jimmy doolittle flew into washington dc that day picked us up and we flew down to aglin field with our our box full of all this secret information that we were going to disseminate on a carrier later there was one facet of the planned raid that was seemingly beyond jimmy doolittle's control the plan to recover the bombers and their crews in china the plan was that a plane was to come from chung king the headquarters of the chinese landed a field called tuchao with a sufficient gas to gas our planes up so we could take off and fly into interior china the political and military conditions in china were such that hap arnold did not believe he could share the full details of the doolittle raid plan with anyone in the country without compromising the mission well there was a great reluctance by colonel doolow and the air staff members that knew about it and the navy officers that knew about what they were hoping to do to communicate to anybody in china because they felt that they couldn't be trusted that there were too many ears and eyes listening and looking and what goes went on over there especially on chiang kai-shek's staff and so they decided to keep it as secret as possible but to make requests for information or for for for example having gas available for the aircraft to refuel and refuel when they got to china and also to have a beacon placed at two or three of the bases and so that they could home in on it the aircraft when they reached chinese coast could home in on radio beacons to find the airport where they could land and be refueled and then proceed to chiang king which was the ultimate destination on march 25th hap arnold sent general joseph e stillwell the ranking american officer in china a message specifying the stocks of fuel that would be needed and the airfields where they should be available stillwell responded that according to the chinese weilin and chuchao were the only field safe enough for heavy bomber operations doolittle later wrote i was not too worried about the apparent misunderstandings in china i thought any problems would be worked out by the time we left the carrier however what would eventually befall the b-25s that made it to china would bear little resemblance to the plan doolittle believed to be in place when the bombers left the hornet [Applause] [Music] in the third week of march navy admiral nimitz's staff wired a message to washington that contained a pre-arranged code phrase tell jimmy to get on his horse those seven words meant it was time for the planes and crews to leave eglinfield florida for the air depot at sacramento for the last minute checks on each airplane before flying on to san francisco to be loaded aboard the hornet on the morning of march 23rd jimmy doolittle called all the crews together and told them to get ready to move out those who would not be going on the mission were sent back to colombia with this admonition from doolittle don't tell anyone what you were doing here at egland not your family your wives anybody the lives of your buddies and a lot of other people depend on you keeping everything you saw and did hear a secret [Music] 22 airplanes and flight crews had been readied for the mission every man who trained to fly the mission was going aboard the hornet for backup's sake and to ensure the security of the mission in effect the flight from eglin air force base in florida west to the air depot at sacramento california was the first leg on the raiders ultimate journey to japan sacramento was supposed to be a routine stop for minor adjustments and last minute maintenance but it turned out to be an experience that jimmy doolittle reduced to just five letters at seattle the mishandling of the precisely tuned b-25s and the slow pace of the work caused doo little to call washington he refused to talk to anyone but hap arnold though arnold intervened the stop in seattle likely caused one b-25 to burn excessive amounts of fuel its crew had to make an unplanned landing in russia where they were imprisoned on april 8th the enterprise and its task force under the command of admiral william bull halsey would depart pearl harbor for an april 12 rendezvous with the hornet in the pacific at latitude 38 degrees zero minutes north and longitude 180 degrees zero minutes from there they would try to steam through 1500 treacherous miles of enemy controlled waters to get within 450 miles of japan perhaps it was the men of the doolittle raid admiral halsey was thinking about when he later wrote there are no great men only challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet at the time of the before this active action took place we were 650 miles and having to launch early right away our fuel became a problem and our best calculations were that after about five hours we were going to run out of gas and we were going to be short of china by about 100 to 150 miles so i think all of the planes made some kind of a decision in our plane we thought well we're going to be running out of gas if we see a ship we'll ditch next to it and they'll take us aboard and if it's a friendly ship fine we'll sail off with them if it's an unfriendly ship we each had 45s and we'll pull out our 45s and take over the ship i was in the back of the airplane the other four fellows were in the front they were all thrown out through the nose the pilot and co-pilot was still strapped to their armor-plated seats when they came too in the water i was knocked unconscious for a little while in the back and sort of came to and and could see water running in what i thought was the bottom of the airplane well i finally realized the airplane was upside down i never believed that it would be possible for a guy to live on rice but you know you can live on rice i didn't think it was possible i think they were very scared uh they tortured them brutally they would take iron rods and put them behind the break of the knee and then they would jump on the thighs and which caused you know obviously a great deal of pain outside there was a lot of wind rain and lightning and you were going to have to go through that hole into a foreign country and then having any idea where you were or anything about it i mean that was the scariest time [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] on january 17 1942 chief of u.s army air force's henry h hap-arnold assigned the responsibility for one of president franklin d roosevelt's highest military priorities a payback attack on the japanese home islands to one of the most famous aviators in history lieutenant colonel james h doolittle in a mere 66 days doolittle had identified the airplanes that could be modified to launch a carrier-based attack some 450 miles from japan had assembled the volunteer crews modified the mitchell b-25s to give them the range to reach a safe haven in free china after the raid and accomplish the mapping and charting the cruise would require now on march 23 1942 doolittle assembled the men who had been training for the mission at their training base near fort walton beach florida it was time to fly the planes west to the sacramento california air depot for final adjustments as he had before doolittle offered any man who wanted to the ability to leave the highly dangerous mission without recrimination none did you don't take off on a mission like this without a light at the end of the tunnel we all thought that somehow we get out of it well in the training in florida we were always flying just above the water all the time right down the over the river valleys and between the trees and then we head stopped all the way across the united states to alameda that down as long as the fly yeah i think bill asked me if i would go as his co-pilot and i said well of course somewhere along the line they interject the thing that was a suicide mission i don't think it was any more of a suicide mission than i was taking off from england going over to germany it was just the signs of the times and that's the way it had to be and that's the way it was and that's the way it was accepted i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] [Music] the doolittle raider b-25s began arriving at mcclellan army airfield in sacramento early in the last week of march 1942. they were already highly modified and carefully tuned aircraft doolittle arrived at the air depot on march 26th he made it clear that no one was to tamper with or remove anything from any aircraft there were specific tasks to be performed by the civilian personnel at the depot new propellers were to be installed 60 gallon gas tanks not already installed were to be fitted where the lower turrets had been removed new covers had to be fitted for the bombay auxiliary tanks new glass navigation windows were to replace the plexiglas type doolittle smelled trouble almost immediately he wrote despite my pleading the civilian maintenance crews went about their assignments at a leisurely pace this naturally made me very angry i told my crews to stay with their planes and watch the work being done ted lawson was the pilot of raider airplane number seven in his now famous book 30 seconds over tokyo he wrote all of us were so afraid that they'd hurt the ships the way they were handling them yet we couldn't tell them why we wanted them to be so careful yet we all kept beefing until doolittle got on the long distance phone called washington and had the work done the way we wanted it done and he called general arnold in washington and told them in effect build a fire to these guys for me because they're not answering my feelings for urgency and well they got the message from general arnold directly and they but it looks as though one at least one aircraft the one that went to russia was the one that had the difficulty with carburetors the technician that was checking it says these things are way out of whack they're too they're they're too lean and they've got to be enriched and so we changed them and that apparently is the airplane that had to go to russia because of fuel over burn on march 30th just two days before the raiders were due aboard the hornet doolittle said he would be going into san francisco to have dinner with his wife joe she had been in los angeles visiting her ill father coincidentally doolittle had also received a message to meet that evening with admiral william halsey halsey recalled our talk boiled down to this we would carry jimmy within 400 miles of tokyo if we could move in that close but if we were discovered sooner we would have to launch him anyway provided he was in reach of either tokyo or midway with a word from general arnold the pace of the work of the sacramento air depot picked up but when an exasperated doolittle was ready to depart for alameda to put the planes aboard the uss hornet a maintenance officer presented him with a form for evaluating the work that had been done doolittle hastily scrawled the word lousy across it and stalked off for his b-25 the young officer turned to doo little second-in-command jack hilger and shouted who does that guy think he is he's heading for a lot of trouble he sure is hilger answered he sure is doolittle had originally requisitioned 24 b-25s for the mission two had fallen by the wayside during training at eglin field 22 airplanes were now bound for the dock at alameda to be loaded aboard the hornet but the room on the deck only allowed for 16 planes to take off doolittle had decisions to make it was interesting how he did that as each pilot uh taxied his his plane up to do a little standing uh the boss would shout up to the pilot is everything okay with your plane and not knowing what an important question this was if the man says well my left engine is a little rough that's all it took and that's how they eliminated four planes now the crews themselves were put on the carrier with us and went across the ocean with probably first for security reasons but actually as we went across the pacific uh doolittle had the pot the ability to make some personnel changes that he would have liked to have made and wouldn't have been able to made without these extra crews on our way to alameda our plane flew under the oakland bay bridge and flew got to alameda and looked down those aircraft carrier there with five or six airplanes on the deck we landed and taxied right up to the dock right beside the carrier then he used three eye bolts to screw into the top the airplane and use that to hoist the airplane up onto the deck of the carrier and i had to be in the pilot's compartment to set the brakes when they set down on the deck of the carrier so i didn't walk aboard the carrier i didn't walk off out either well as the number of airplanes took up more than more of the deck it became very apprehensive on how much of the deck was left for us to take off from but we had taken off from a dry runway in the same distance fully loaded at a glut and in the actual takeoff we had the carrier speed wind we had the natural wind and [Music] i think most of us were pretty confident that we could get off as a matter of fact colonel doodle wrote in his final report that a night takeoff would have been possible on april 1 1942 the men of the doolittle raid walked aboard the hornet waiting for them on the ship was the navy pilot who had trained them on short field takeoff techniques at eglin field bill miller i was proud of those fellas that day miller recalled as each man came aboard he saluted the national ensign and then the officer of the deck and said sergeant or lieutenant or captain reporting for duty sir at 3 p.m on april 1st the hornet unmoored from the dock in alameda and moved to birth number 9 in san francisco bay the doolittle raiders were getting settled aboard the ship well they've treated us pretty well we didn't i was an enlisted man so they we didn't have to sleep in the hammocks they let us sleep in the box doolittle called the raiders together after a brief lecture on security he surprised them by letting them go ashore for the evening we were told that we could go in the doo little raider boys and spend an evening in san francisco and to meet a boat which would pick them up the next morning at a certain wharf and take us back out to the carrier so we were very happy about that and we later learned that the boss jimmy doolittle went into town and met with bull halsey who had flown in from hawaii halsey was going to be in command of the two carriers and foreign of our whole task force from venues like the top of the mark in the mark hopkins hotel the raiders could look down and see their b-25s poised for this top-secret mission in the middle of san francisco bay a cover story had been put out that the planes were being taken to hawaii the raiders might not have known exactly what they were headed for but they were reasonably sure it was not waikiki beach the aircraft carrier hornets steamed out of san francisco bay on april 2nd 1942 with 16 u.s army b-25 mitchell bombers on her flight deck and all 22 bomber crews on board i had never seen a carrier before and i was really surprised by the size of the thing two cruisers and four destroyers whose job was to protect the vulnerable and valuable carrier accompanied the hornet the task force also included an oiler a floating gas station that would refuel the flotilla in mid-pacific as the hornet cleared port doolittle called the army crews together he told them for the first time where they were going and what they were going to do he told them that their chances of getting back to the states were pretty slim and that any crew member who wanted to withdraw could do so no one did the hornet was america's newest aircraft carrier and her crew was as green as green apples but they were eager for action their skipper captain pete mitcher had ordered the words remember pearl harbor painted on the hornet's smokestack when we first got on the carrier tote in san francisco bay we were very tight-lipped we had been told of course don't tell anybody anything now here we were getting on this nice brand new carrier and these navy boys were naturally very curious they wanted to know what this was all about and where we were going and we of course wouldn't tell them we had strict orders not to tell them and they were very unhappy with us i think most of them thought that this brand new carrier was going to be used to transport a bunch of army boys in their planes to probably hawaii they didn't like the idea at all on april 4 two days after the task force left san francisco the bosun's whistle sounded aboard the hornet and captain mitcher made an announcement over the ship's loudspeakers now hear this the target of this task force is tokyo the army is going to bomb japan and we're going to get them as close to the enemy as we can this is a chance for all of us to give the japs a dose of their own medicine mitcher's message was sent simultaneously by semaphore morse code to the rest of the task force there was wild cheering on every ship [Music] and from that time on the navy and we got along very well the big chair went up and uh they were of course very happy to hear what we were going to do and it was they got so friendly then that they invited us into their poker games and most of the doolittle raiders took off 18 days later flat broke we left our money with the navy boys [Music] doolittle's crews had plenty of things to keep them busy the army bombers were not built for ocean duty and the salt air caused all kinds of problems spark plugs generators and hydraulics failed fuel tanks leaked one engine had to be completely overhauled and there were continuing problems with the gun turrets well we went up on on deck every day to check the airplane you've seen pictures of how the airplanes are tied down on the deck and the the salt air would tighten those ropes up and make make sure they weren't too tight but then when that it got dry then they'd loosen up so i had to check that all the time and every few days they'd have to take those covers off the engines just run them up make sure they were running all right and they had those covers on there to try and keep us all there getting to the engines in the evenings the bomber crews explored the ship read books listened to records ate ice cream in the ship's mess the rest of time we grew up on deck we could to exercise we'd run the whole circle of the deck and up and down those stairs there's a lot of stairs on a carrier most of the army crews had never been to sea before and several of them were seasick for most of the voyage [Music] on april 8 the aircraft carrier enterprise steamed out of pearl harbor to rendezvous with a hornet admiral william bull halsey commanded the enterprise two cruisers four destroyers and an oiler accompanied it as well enterprise and hornet would rendezvous in mid-pacific from then on airplanes from the enterprise would provide defensive air cover for the combined task force as it steemed toward japan on board the hornet the sailors were edgy they knew that a single japanese submarine a japanese battleship or a japanese carrier task force could put their precious hornet in jeopardy the original plan was if we run into an enemy task force out there and we were within flying distance on foia we're supposed to take off immediately so the harness air the carrier could get his airplane near or if we were within a distance of midway i think it was we could do that or if we were in within the distance of japan would take off and fly there if not then they were going to push the airplanes overboard so the hornets could get this airplane in the air i think this is one of the things that's often missed is the value of the hornet at the time was just unimaginable to the navy because we were had had pearl harbor where our fleet was gone and we were down to very very few aircraft carriers and the risk one on a mission like this was just really significant on april 9th the day before the hornet and enterprise joined up allied ground forces fighting on the bataan peninsula in the philippines surrendered to the japanese army the next day 000 american and filipino prisoners of war began a 60-mile week-long forced march that would leave 12 000 dead from starvation thirst and japanese brutality it would be known as the batan death march as the combined task force made its way toward japan doolittle's b-25 crews were kept busy but they still had plenty of time to think about the mission that lay ahead it was not a suit of suicide mission in the sense that everybody knew they were going to be lost that it was there was a one-way trip for them none of them never felt that way as far as i know they were following their leader and that leader if he could do it we could do it and that's why he was in the number one airplane no it was we did not consider a suicide mission later as we as we had to take off 250 miles earlier than we had planned and things didn't look so good we thought well this is going to be pretty rough but i think you more or less always feel sorry for this other guy he's going to get it but i'm going to get through this somehow and you don't take off on a mission like this without a light at the end of the tunnel we all thought that somehow we get out of it halsey's task force and the entire mission was in much greater danger than anyone imagined the japanese navy had intercepted a radio message on april 10th that they knew halsey was heading east toward japan with two carrier groups they began planning the destruction of the american carriers but the japanese did not envision the americans putting bombers on an aircraft carrier they believe the planes to be navy fighters planes that would have to launch within 300 miles of japan in order to reach the islands they thought the americans would be close enough to attack by april 14th they prepared to strike halsey's task force with land-based bombers 600 miles from tokyo then to follow up with torpedo planes sinking the american carrier groups would complete the destruction of america's pacific fleet but there were no more radio intercepts and bad weather kept halsey ships hidden from the japanese when april 14th the expected invasion date came and went japanese officials relaxed and assumed halsey was headed somewhere else at three in the morning on april 18th radar on the enterprise picked up two small ships about 12 miles ahead they were part of an early warning network ringing the japanese islands the task force went into full alert and changed course to avoid being seen at 0.340 enterprise signaled all clear four hours later a lookout on the hornet cited another enemy boat soon after hornet's radio operator intercepted a message in japanese halsey's task force had been spotted [Music] april 18 1942 dawned bright and clear in tokyo officials prepared for a civil defense drill to be held later that morning but no one believed that american bombers could reach japan and most people just went about their business early in the morning our task force went between two japanese picket ships 650 miles out actually they were fishing vessels equipped with radios to report just the sort of thing they saw that morning two carriers and four cruisers heading for japan and before they were sunk our people realized that they had been able to radio into the main islands of japan that this task force was heading for halsey wrote although we were 600 miles from tokyo instead of the 400 that we had hoped for the fact that our task force had been reported left me no choice at o 800 i sent pete mitcher a signal launch planes and to colonel doolittle and his gallant command good luck and god bless you halsey ordered the cruiser nashville to sink the japanese picket ship the nito meru in rough seas nashville's crew fired 924 six-inch shells but scored just one hit on the picket boat the japanese raised a white flag and their ship promptly sank early in the morning most of us were probably below deck we could hear that the guns going else and almost immediately it seemed like they announced over the speaker that army pilots manual planes so they had to pack up our uh bag and get up to the airplane as soon as possible like everybody else it was around i think six o'clock when we [Music] got up some of us were down and having breakfast the first real notification was when the nashville opened up on the nita meru i for one want to make sure that i arrived at the airplane before coral door little well i was the second lieutenant and he was a lieutenant colonel and i didn't want to get verbally lambasted for being late and the other thing is that i wanted to get up in the airplane and go through the checklist and have a lot of the things that i i could do that he wouldn't have to worry about we're pretty much in off position when colonel durant came doolittle called all the crews on deck and went over their instructions one more time he offered the men one more chance to step down there were no takers several backup crew members begged for a chance to take someone's place on the mission again no takers one of the backup pilots did find a place on the mission robert heights plane had been left behind at alameda in san francisco i always thought that dad was co-pilot of plane 16. well originally he was pilot of one of the four planes that couldn't fit on the on the aircraft carrier and that bill farrow didn't apparently didn't get along with his co-pilot or his co-pilot decided that he didn't want to go and bill came and asked my father to fly with him robert height co-pilot of plane number 16 would be captured by the japanese and would spend three and a half years in captivity [Music] mitchell turned the hornet directly into the wind and ordered full speed ahead well the the weather um it was the ocean was very very rough the water was coming up over the deck of the carrier launching early meant the planes would have farther to go and need more fuel but their fuel tanks were already full after i got in the airplane they handed me up a dozen five gallon cans of gasoline then before we got to japan they used the gasoline out of that turret tank first then i was able to dump the gasoline out of the one dozen cans into the turret tank then it kind of used a crash shack to cut a hole in each end of the empty cans and i kicked them out the window i did that so they would sink immediately instead of leaving a trail across the ocean from direction we'd come doolittle's plane was the first to take off it was at the start line brakes locked engines running at 8 20 that morning this navy signalman was squirreling his flag to give him the signal but when to take off he'd run the engines at full power and the signalman could tell from the sound of the engines when they were at full power so then when the bow of the carrier was at the lowest spot closest to water he uh dropped to the deck and flung a flag forward and that's when they're supposed to start rolling then by the time the airplane got to the end of the bow or the top of the bell the air the carrier the bow the carrier was as far as as from the waters could be so that gives them that much distance between the water and the valve the carrier i was in plane number nine there was a probably 200 feet or more of clear deck ahead of us but each one of us were pulled up to that same line we all had 400 feet to take off and one reason that they did that was because our right wing tip just missed the island by about six feet and our left wheel then was about six feet from the edge of the carrier deck so if we veered to the right or left in a longer takeoff run we might uh hit the right wing or the le or the left wheel overboard so we all took off from the same place and we all got airborne as as planned and it was it was a little uh exciting at first but plane number nine that i was on by the time it was our turn we were feeling pretty brave about the whole thing eight planes had successfully negotiated the takeoff ahead of us but i would bet that uh the top the average flight time for the pilots on the mission was probably about 500 hours and in the b-25 maybe a hundred dollars so it was they were by modern standards terribly under-trained but by their standards they were good they were proficient they could fly instruments they could fly formation and they they knew the nature of the mission i i think that all of them went in knowing exactly what was at risk their lives were at risk but it was worth it it was the mission they were assigned to do in his autobiography admiral halsey wrote the wind and sea were so strong that morning that green water was breaking over the carrier's ramps jimmy led his squadron off when his plane buzzed down the hornet's deck at 0825 there wasn't a man topside in the task force who didn't help sweat him into the air one pilot hung on the brink of a stall until we nearly catalogued his effects but the last of the sixteen was airborne by o924 and a minute later my staff duty officer was writing in the flag log commencing retirement from the area at 25 knots here let me say that in my opinion their flight was one of the most courageous deeds in all military history [Music] when the aircraft carrier hornet turned into the westerly wind to launch the bombers it pointed almost directly at tokyo bay now each plane went in on its own it took takes gas and time to to form a formation so each plane was on its own we didn't have gas to waste and getting together in formation so we were about four or five minutes apart which meant that in most cases we never saw another b25 on that day now when we took off 650 miles out there was a solid overcast and high winds and as we proceeded towards japan about two hours all that cleared up and we had a nice sunny day for the rest of the day way into late afternoon it was nice and sunny so we got a big break there but we went in right on the deck so the radar couldn't pick us up so easily flying inbound to japan they were had no idea what the japanese intercept capabilities were they knew that they had been detected and so they were obviously cautious the technique would be to fly low and fast but the faster you go the more fuel you use so they had to compromise in their cruise control techniques to fly a reasonable speed to get them and get them over japan and subsequently over china i think that the average pilot flying it was probably exhilarated because it's fun to fly at relatively low levels and the average co-pilot was probably concerned a that he wasn't getting enough stick time and and b that uh he had to make sure that the engines weren't uh getting too hot because he's running the mixers too lean the mixture is extremely important when you're trying to get mileage out of your airplane you're not carrying you don't care anymore about speed particularly you're caring about getting a distance out of the engines so they all practice cruise control in that sense the fuel situation was made even worse by the additional fuel tanks one in the belly and one over the bombay of each bomber the tanks had been poorly designed and poorly built and they leaked from every corner and from every connection on every one of the 16 planes fuel critical to the mission was leaking away once they were off the carrier the crews faced about three and a half hours of flying time to japan they were barely flying 150 to 160 miles per hour just above stall speed they were flying 15 to 30 feet off the water as the excitement of the launch wore off they thought about the mission ahead most of the crews agreed that they didn't have enough fuel to reach china aboard plane number nine navigator tom griffin calculated just how far their fuel would take them and our best calculations were that after about five hours we were going to run out of gas and we were going to be short of china by about 100 to 150 miles so i think all of the planes made some kind of a decision in our plane we thought well we're going to be running out of gas if we see a ship we'll ditch next to it and they'll take us aboard and if it's a friendly ship fine we'll sail off with them if it's an unfriendly ship we each had 45s and we'll pull out our 45s and take over the ship those you have to have a light at the end of the tunnel and that was the light we had spread out over some 500 square miles of open ocean the 16 bombers were heading for targets in tokyo yokohama yokosuka nagoya and kobe the japanese people had been told that they were invulnerable months of victories had demonstrated that destiny the gods and military might were on the side of the emperor above all they believed their homeland was safe from attack [Music] sixteen american planes and eighty brave men were about to prove otherwise dick cole was the co-pilot of plane number one which was piloted by colonel doolittle we launched it about 8 20 in the morning it put us over tokyo at right around noon we showed into japan about 20 miles north we could see tokyo bay and we turned south and took us on a course over tokyo east of the imperial palace we had incendiary bombs and the reason was that since we were supposed to launch at dust on the 19th arrive over tokyo drop the incendiary bombs and light up tokyo so that uh it would uh cause a big fire also it would give the following airplanes a some kind of a reference to where they wanted to go but having the lunch early put us over tokyo in the middle of the day on the 18th a couple of things that may have helped us the japanese had just practiced an air raid exercise and they had a bomber called the betty that had two tails and for the first airplane we feel that a lot of the people on the ground thought it was one of their airplane when they saw the b-25 because we were not jumped by any other airplanes we flew low level until fred bremer recognized from photographs that they had given us on the carrier at that time colonel doolittle pulled up to 1500 feet and we dropped our incendiary bomb and immediately went back down on the deck the package opened up on us and it was pretty intense but was not accurate of the 16 mitchell bombers only two made landfall where they expected inaccurate compasses overcast skies and a 40 knot headwind made accurate navigation impossible once the planes were over japan all 16 navigators were able to lead their planes to their targets but getting lost even briefly burned precious fuel and the japanese knew they were coming picket boats guarding the coast and patrol planes sent out to search for the nito meru had spotted the inbound raiders several hundred miles out when we were over tokyo we had counted 37 airplanes above us and they did not see us civilians who saw the mitchells mistook them for japanese planes the morning air raid drill had been ignored by most of the populace and they assumed that the low-flying bombers were just part of the exercise as we came over the coast uh it was saturday right at noon beautiful day there were a lot of people on the beach they were waving to us and uh and like we were flying so low i could see the expression on their faces they were cheering i'm sure they thought we were jumping in airplanes we followed japanese coast all the way south west until we got to the tip of japan and headed west to china plane number eight still burning too much fuel hit its target a factory north of tokyo as they sped away on the deck pilot ski york co-pilot robert emmons and navigator nolan herndon discussed their options the russian city of vladivostok was 600 miles north although doolittle had ordered that no one landed in russia the crew of plane number eight felt they had little choice york turned the bomber north and when we got over the city of tokyo itself we went in at rooftop level until we got to what we call our initial point where we pulled up to 1500 feet to make our bombing run on our assigned target plane number nine happened to just fly right over hirohito's house at about 50 feet and then we proceeded down to the northern section of tokyo bay and headed across to bamar target which was a factory in the kawasaki district of tokyo making tanks and we made our bomb run the bombardier in the nose and the top turret gunner could see what our bombs did the pilot co-piloted and i couldn't tell so we had to take their word for it but they said that we really flattened that target there was flack in the sky everywhere and there were japanese zeroes flying around and we went in right at rooftop level which made it very difficult for them to attack us and they had flak towers and they had to depress their guns to shoot at our people and i actually saw their shells exploding in the street as as we went across the city as they were shooting at us despite clouds of anti-aircraft fire and swarms of japanese fighter planes all 16 mitchells hit their targets and raced away undamaged getting lost on the way in had an unexpected benefit the bombers hit tokyo from every possible direction and the japanese defenses were thrown into chaos 15 mitchells and their crews now headed for china across the china sea most of them doubted that their remaining fuel would get them there behind them tokyo burned admiral halsey later wrote we had our radios tuned to tokyo one of their glibest liars came on and began describing in english the wonders of life in japan of all the warring countries in the world he said japan alone was free from enemy attack it would continue so indeed japan was blessed among nations and right there we heard the air raid sirens jimmy's boys had arrived [Music] we were captured by the japanese and they carried us back to japan and and so they gave us court martials and all of that and they condemned us to death and then they decided to let us live they executed three of the pilots and so that left the rest of us was with the uh possibility that we could be later on could be executed anytime so i kept walking and at dust i came out on a cliff and down below i saw a little contourment of a couple of buildings that had a chinese nationalist flag flying up above on the table was a sketch of a on a piece of paper of a two-tailed airplane with five parachutes coming out of it and the pilot had a deep gas in his left leg and one in his left arm and most of his teeth had been knocked out the co-pilot had a a gauge in his right right leg and i used uh i had to get used some old dirty rags to try to close up the cuts on the other wounds so when we knew we were over the the rim of the china we pulled up to 11 000 feet or 10 000 to clear any mountains in that part of china and then as we ran out of gas we just bailed out by the time we got up there going into china we could not let down it was nighttime we were in a big storm and there were mountains below us so all we could do was to head into that storm run out of gas and bail out that's what 11 or 55 men bailed out of 11 planes [Music] [Music] on april 18 1942 just 132 days after japan bombed pearl harbor tokyo was burning it was about 1 30 in the afternoon when the first b-25 flown by the doolittle tokyo raiders dropped its first bomb the japanese high command and the civilian population was caught off guard as the raiders approached the coast of japan they saw smiling civilians waving at them from fishing boats beaches and baseball parks they were so convinced their island home was beyond the reach of the allied bombers they didn't imagine that danger was imminent even though u.s army air corps bombers were screaming overhead just above the treetops it was one of the most brilliantly conceived operations in aerial combat history all 16 mitchell b-25s found their intended targets and delivered their payloads what the enemy did not know was the doolittle raiders were nearly 12 hours and 250 miles early for their rendezvous with history the uss hornet and the b-25s had been spotted much farther out than their planned launch distance early this morning 80 doolittle raiders had scrambled aboard their airplanes knowing they did not have adequate fuel capacity to reach any safe haven it was an act of valor rarely matched in modern military history before it was over a despondent jimmy doolittle not knowing the location or the fate of his gallant cruise would sit atop the wreckage of his airplane and predict his own court-martial he didn't know the raid he had led would play a pivotal role in turning the tide of events in the pacific in favor of the allies that he had in fact just completed a mission that would change the war i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] 27 year old richard cole was seated in the co-pilot seat of doolittle raider b-25 number one as a young boy in dayton ohio he used to ride his bicycle to a levee above mccook army airfield to watch the legendary pilots of the army air service test flying the leading edge airplanes of the day one of those pilots was james h doolittle now doolittle was seated inches away on dick cole's left as they lowered their bomber down to rooftop level in tokyo's western suburbs they had hit their targets and were hightailing it for a planned landing field in eastern china near chuchao we flew low level until fred bremer recognized from photographs that they had given us on the carrier at that time colonel doolittle pulled up to 1500 feet and we dropped our incendiary mount and immediately went back down on the deck the acknack opened up on us and it was pretty intense but was not accurate we flew maybe a hundred miles south out low level and not wanting to turn toward china and alert them over the possibility that they would recognize where we were going and when we turned on a southwest heading and flew open water just strictly by magnetic navigation but they had been bucking headwinds since they had left the carrier with the extra distance they had been forced to fly they did not have the gas to make landfall then the weather began to change it had been severe clear over tokyo but now the ceiling was dropping and the wind was swirling by the time they reached yakishima on japan's western coast visibility was down to 600 feet the bad news was night was falling and they were in a serious storm the good news was the headwind was now a 25 mile per hour tailwind it just might provide enough push to get them to the china coast tom griffin was the navigator in airplane number nine now according to the anticipated wind we were going to have a headwind which was the normal wind at that time of the year in particular across the china sea and our best calculations were that after about five hours we were going to run out of gas and we were going to be short of china by about 100 to 150 miles and there was another bigger problem there was supposed to be a portable homing station there so we could use our radio compass and arrive their land and gas up and fly on into western china but the fact that we arrived when we did in the middle of that big storm there wasn't any chance of trying to make an approach into one of the fields the other thing is that that homing station was in an airplane that crashed on a way to get there so it was not there the other thing was that the chinese hearing our engines thought it was the japanese air raid and they shut off all the electricity so we were in limbo after 13 hours in the air and flying 2 250 miles the right front fuel tank was showing empty doolittle told his crew to bail out it was about 9 30 p.m for me the most scared and worrisome and whatever other adjective you want to use of the whole mission was standing in the airplane looking down at that black hole because we ejected the hatch and outside there was a lot of wind rain and lightning and you were going to have to go through that hole into a foreign country and then having any idea where you were or anything about it maybe that was the scariest time after putting the b-25 on automatic pilot jimmy doolittle shut both gas [ __ ] off and left the airplane he landed in a rice paddy in a sitting position he was neck deep in night soil the chinese had had been for centuries had been nurturing their crops and fertilizing their crops was what they called night soil this is human waste and animal and human waste to fertilize their crops following a cold wet night an elderly farmer he had met on the road took doolittle to a local chinese military headquarters there were some tense moments when doolittle refused to surrender his sidearm to the soldiers but he eventually convinced them he was an american ally and they began to help him at about nine pm airplane number seven was nearing an island off the coast at san chao pilot ted lawson thought he could spare the crew the risk and trauma of bailing out by affecting a controlled landing in shallow water just about dark it was raining finally spotted some land and and the pilot spotted a strip of beach and he thought he could land on that beach there the engines had been running so cool all the time that stopped at the last second with his landing and we had the wheel down we hit the water with the wheel down and it immediately turned us over i was uh i was in the back the airplane the other four fellows were in the front [Music] they were all thrown out through the nose the pilot and co-pilot was still strapped to their armor-plated seats when they came too in the water i was knocked unconscious for a little while in the back and sort of came to and could see water running in what i thought was the bottom of the airplane well i finally realized the airplane was upside down and that plexiglass on a turret had shattered and that's where the water was coming in so then i was able to open the escape hats on the bottom of the airplane and crawl out there by that time i got out of the airplane the other four fellows had were already up on the beach in one of the countless acts of chinese heroism performed in the wake of the doolittle raid the resistance leader operating in the area helped thatcher create bamboo pallets so the injured could be transported we found out later that they the japanese landed 65 zap soldiers on that spot where we crashed came looking for us but we had a head start on them got across the island airplane number 15 had scored a direct hit on the steel works in the northeastern part of kobe it was making its way to the chinese coast at san man bay as the weather closed in it was nearly 9 p.m the left engine was backfiring and the right one was generating very little power the pilot donald smith had decided on a water landing about 400 yards offshore it went well there were no injuries in the roughly eight minutes that the plane remained afloat the engineer gunner lieutenant thomas white scrambled to recover some critically important tools thomas white was not an average gunner well dr white was a flight surgeon but he when he found out about the raid he asked colonel hilger who was the second in command and doc white was about his age the same age as helger in other words older than the normal or the average raider and he said well i'd like to go on a raid and uh colonel hilger said well you can't go doc we we've got five men on each airplane we can't find another seat for you it just wouldn't be right so he said if you but if you want to be a a gunner you you could maybe go as a gunner but you're not a gunner you're a flight surgeon he said well i could i could be a gunner let me have a chance to try so he went down and shot the guns and did i think he came off second best and making a score compared to some of the other uh gunners and so he got the job as a gunner and so here this it was a fortuitous choice to have him go on those on that mission because he certainly was helpful when he got to china after a night in a fishing village friendly chinese rode dr white and the rest of the crew to the island of nandian again the locals put their lives on the line hiding the crew in a buddhist temple while 65 japanese soldiers swept through the area looking for them on nandian dr white learned of the injuries suffered by david thatcher's crew according to lieutenant smith from the moment he did he seemed to have only one desire which was to reach them as soon as possible it was the ideal providential meeting of these two crews with doc white that saved one of the raiders ted lawson saved his life because lawson was about to lose his leg and doc white amputated it he gave lawson blood from his own arms but dock himself when it got too bad the loss was about to go then he gave blood from his own himself which is i imagine a difficult thing to do the day began badly for the crew of airplane number 16 as they sat with propellers turning on the deck of the hornet a sailor on the deck crew slipped the prop last from airplane number 15 blew him backwards into 16's left propeller his arm was so severely injured it required amputation the crew members were lieutenant william g farrow pilot lieutenant robert height co-pilot lieutenant george barr navigator jacob d deschazer bombardier and harold a spatz engineer gunner in nagoya the crew found their targets a battery of oil storage tanks and an aircraft factory so far george barr wrote all had gone well i gave the pilot a new heading and we started our last leg of the trip like the other 15 raider b-25s number 16 encountered the curse of the storm and the blessing of the tailwind and like every other airplane they experienced the sinking sensation of getting no response from choo chow on 44.95 kilo cycles landfall and nightfall arrived together just as the fuel warning lights came on a break in the overcast revealed the lights of a city navigator barr quickly figured it was nan chang they were over an area believed to be in japanese control there was no choice now all hands took to their parachutes when they landed it was nearly 1am by daylight all five would be in japanese hands for robert height george barr and jacob deshazer it was the first day of three and a half years of hell on earth bill farrow and harold spatz would never see their homeland again [Music] the targets for airplane number three were industrial buildings and docks on the east side of tokyo once again the 20 cent bomb site designed by ross greening at eglin field performed flawlessly number three which was nicknamed whiskey pete for pilot bob gray's pinto pony back in texas made its run for the chinese coast at 10 pm flying in thin overcast both fuel gauges registered empty the crew went out in the usual order engineer followed by the bombardier then the navigator and the co-pilot the pilot left last jacob manch the co-pilot spent a cold night in driving rain his parachute gathered about him for two days he wandered trying to find a railroad the raiders were told operated in this part of china on the third day tired hungry and scratched by thick briars he sat waist deep in a stream suddenly the thicket parted and a smiling chinese man with several companions confronted him with sound effects and hand gestures they indicated they knew where manches plane had crashed they led him to a village where he saw chinese gorillas carrying parts of whiskey pete he found something else the body of his crewmate engineer leland d factor of plymouth iowa factor had either struck the plane after leaving it experienced a parachute failure or just hit the ground excessively hard he appeared to have died instantly sadly airplane number six suffered the highest casualties of the raid dean hallmark the pilot delivered his bombs on a steel mill north of tokyo [Music] the airplane nicknamed the green hornet was running on fumes when the coast of china was still 10 minutes ahead of them a water landing loomed the navigator chase nielsen remembered it was a very hard and fast landing that left him temporarily unconscious when nielsen awoke he realized he was in immediate peril the wreckage of the plane was being pounded by surf it was sinking fast though he was bleeding and his nose was broken he climbed up through the windshield inflating his maywest life preserver he joined bob meader the co-pilot on top of the submerging plane while the crew struggled to inflate their malfunctioning life raft william deiter slipped off the wing at nearly the same moment a huge wave washed the rest of them off the now fully submerged b-25 though they tried to maintain voice contact in the dark each man was now left to his own fate chase nielsen would later write i couldn't do a thing but ride the waves i half swam and half floated for what seemed like hours i thought about my family the fellows back at columbia south carolina who did not go on the raid the wonderful navy men who brought us to the launch point and were probably now being chased by the whole japanese navy i wondered where the crews of the other 15 planes were and whether jimmy doolittle's first combat mission might have been his last i feared the worst might happen to dieter and fitz morris because they seemed to be so badly hurt nielsen made it to shore the next morning from a hiding place in the stand of trees he saw villagers and two chinese soldiers looking at two bodies on the beach it was william j dieter from vale iowa and donald e fitzmaurice from lincoln nebraska the local chinese did all they could to hide chase nielsen dean hallmark and bob mater the surviving crew members of the green hornet though the area was swarming with japanese soldiers after one japanese patrol left the three returned to the beach where the chinese had hidden the bodies of dieter and fitzmaurice they placed their comrades in two wooden boxes chose a spot high on the beach and buried them the three officers prayed silently over the two enlisted men who had given their last full measure [Music] i bailed out and left coral there a little he was the last one out my shoe opened properly and looking down and looking at the ripcord i pulled the thing so hard that i gave myself a black eye i was fortunate that my chute drifted over a pine tree and i ended up about 12 feet off of the ground so it was like jumping in a feather bed it was raining very hard and so i pulled part of the chute in and made kind of a hammock affair and spent the night at a tree when daybreak came then i could see the ground i had a compass and started walking west and at dust i came out on a cliff and down below i saw a little contourment of a couple of buildings that had a chinese nationalist uh flag flying up above and yeah the only reason i knew it was a chinese nationalist flag was that the same emblem was painted on the avg p40s that i had read about before anyway i walked down there and i was accosted by a young lad and he took me to a building that was empty except for a table on the table was a sketch of a on a piece of paper of a two-tailed airplane with five pair sheets coming out of it so i finally got in to take me where he took whoever drew the sketch which he did and i walked into this building and it was coral doodle he is the one who had drawn the skin [Music] i said boy am i glad to see you but doolittle was far from happy he recalled the days after the crash landing [Music] when the soldiers found our plane paul leonard and i went to the crash site to see what we could salvage there is no worse sight to an aviator than to see his plane smashed to bits this was my first combat mission i had planned it from the beginning and had led it i was sure it would be my last as far as i was concerned it was a failure and i felt there could be no future for me in uniform now even if we had successfully accomplished the first half of our mission the second half had been to deliver the b-25s to our units in the china burma india theater of operations my main concern was for my men what had happened to my crew probably happened to the others as i sat there paul leonard took my picture and then seeing how badly i felt tried to cheer me up he asked what do you think will happen when you go home colonel i answered well i guess they'll court-martial me and send me to prison at fort leavenworth paul said no sir i'll tell you what will happen they're gonna make you a general and they're gonna give you the congressional medal of honor colonel i know they're going to give you another airplane and when they do i'd like to fly with you as your crew chief it was then that the tears came to my eyes it was the supreme compliment a mechanic could give a pilot [Music] 16 b-25s left the deck of the hornet on the doolittle raid every one of them reached japan and bombed their targets it was true that all the airplanes were lost airplane number eight the airplane that seems to have had its carburetors either changed or reset at the seattle air depot was forced to seek the quickest landing opportunity available it went to vladivostok in russia where it was confiscated by the soviets the crew was interned for over a year until the five men affected their own escape as for doolittle's men three raiders died the night of the raid leland factor the engineer gunner on airplane number three did not survive his bailout william deiter the bombardier on airplane number six was too severely injured to survive the ditching of the airplane off the coast the same was true for his crewmate donald fitzmaurice the engineer gunner on the same airplane eight raiders became prisoners of the japanese lieutenant dean hallmark lieutenant robert meader and lieutenant chase nielsen all crew members of airplane number six were captured the entire crew of airplane number 16 lieutenant william g farrell lieutenant robert l height lieutenant george barr corporal jacob daniel deshazer and sergeant harold a spatz became pows the treatment of the prisoners was horrendous they interrogated us and all of that you know each one individually and there was two airplanes of us that had been captured and they condemned us to death and they ever reprieved us a life imprisonment our sentence was to be kept in solitary confinement i think they were very scared uh they tortured them brutally and they don't talk a lot about that in any of the books when they put a rag over their face and they would pour water until you almost drowned and pass out and and then they would go on slaps beets socks punches common everyday uh bamboo shoots between the joints they would take iron rods and put them behind the break of the knee and then they would jump on the thighs and which caused obviously a great deal of pain by april 24th six days following the raid all of the captured raiders had been flown to tokyo their mistreatment continued unabated until august 28th when they were made to stand trial the trial was conducted in japanese the men had no idea what was being said a record of the trial concluded that the eight had been found guilty as charged and are hereby sentenced to death for reasons unknown dean hallmark william farrow and harold spatz were sentenced to be executed on october 14 1942 hallmark pharaoh and spatz were informed they were to be executed the next day they were given paper and pencil and told they could write to their family and friends hallmark wrote to his father mother and sister i hardly know what to say he wrote they just told me i am liable to execution i can hardly believe it i wanted to be a commercial pilot and would have been if it wasn't for this war to his mother he wrote try to stand up under this and pray bill pharaoh wrote his widowed mother don't let this get you down just remember that god will make everything right and i will see you again in the hereafter my faith in god is complete so i am unafraid harold spatz wrote to his widower father in lebo kansas if i have inherited anything since i became of age i will give it to you and dad i want you to know that i love you and god bless you i want you to know that i died fighting for my country like a soldier the next day on october 15 1942 the three do little raiders were executed by firing squad those fellas were tortured they were starved they were put in solitary confinement they were beaten repeatedly and nothing they could do about it i mean they just lived a very tortured existence each was growing steadily weaker and bob meter was the weakest of the five meter looked like a walking skeleton on december 1st 1943 the once sturdily built athletic meter died quietly in his cell the japanese were completely incensed by the doolittle raid they had been concerned that such a raid might originate in china general claire chanult head of the celebrated flying tigers who were operating in china recalled that the japanese drove 200 miles into east china to seek revenge chanult wrote one sizeable city was raised for no other reason than the sentiment displayed by its citizens in filling up [ __ ] bomb craters on nearby airfields a quarter million chinese civilians and soldiers were reportedly killed in the three-month campaign the chinese had been at war with the japanese since 1937 they knew well the brutality they employed against those who oppose them yet time and again they risked all to try to help the lost american flyers get to their ultimate destination the wartime capital of chongqing their legacy is typified by a story of tong cheng a chinese engineering student who was pressed into service to help airplane number two escape at the time he risked his life for the american flyers and undertook this most hazardous of journeys lou had a young pregnant wife man ming wang lu he was leaving behind during our whole trip under lou's guidance our treatment was superb navigator lieutenant carl weidner was quoted as saying he had risked his neck for us after world war ii ended lou came to the u.s to study aeronautical engineering at the university of minnesota he maintained lifelong friendships with the airmen he helped in china lou became a u.s citizen in 1954 four years later he began work as a civilian aeronautical engineer at wright-patterson air force base in dayton ohio where he helped develop the c5 military transport aircraft only two men have been named honorary doolittle raiders one is hank miller the naval aviator who taught the doolittle cruise how to pull a b-25 off the deck of an aircraft carrier in less than 500 feet tang shang lu is the other he died may 3rd 2009 he was honored at the 2010 doolittle raider reunion his children tom sheridan and melinda liu attended 1988 melinda liu has been the beijing bureau chief for newsweek magazine i think it's very hard for people of our generation to understand what our parents went through in the environment that that they went through that was a very special time my father was basically like millions of other chinese trying to get through the war and just happened by happenstance to be in a certain situation that that propelled him to heroic actions and very unusual circumstances and it changed his life forever it began as a boost for the sagging morale of a shocked and angry nation but the doolittle raid turned out to be so much more and it looked like their next big step well might be australia drive down and take over australia and that was just the time when we hit and the japanese decided they were going to put an end to that possibility in the future and six weeks after our raid on japan they got together a huge fleet and headed across the pacific they had four carriers they had cruisers and battleships and they were going to take over midway first possibly hawaii next and our intelligence had broken their code knew they were coming and uh halsey had uh our ship the hornet and the enterprise the other carrier that was with us and a third carrier the yorktown he had us sitting up north of midway and waiting and when the japanese struck midway we flew down there and the rest is history what happened our navy boys sunk all four of those carriers and it was a tremendous victory for our side and from that time on if you analyze the pacific war instead of being on the offensive everywhere they were back on the defensive until we were just within easy striking distance of japan in the summer of 45. following the battle of midway the japanese never scored another victory in the pacific all 80 doolittle raiders received the distinguished flying cross for this mission the chinese government decorated all of the raiders those imprisoned and tortured also received the purple heart david thatcher was awarded the silver star dr thomas white was awarded the silver star james h doolittle was awarded the congressional medal of honor every doolittle raider who was able to fly at the completion of the raid did so and so i went back overseas with the first air commando group that made the aerial invasion of burma later on in 1944 we came back to billings on on furlough for a couple of weeks and then went to macdill field to tampa florida and began training in b-26s was a twin-engine bomber with a single tail and then we were flying submarine patrol between iran algeria and and the coast of spain until about the middle of april 1943 then we moved up to the front and we were bombing the italian and german forces until i finally chased them out of north africa i was on 26 obama masons over there and we all got two weeks leave before we went to our new group in my case it was that b-26 group at hardingfield louisiana captured this this happened in the summer of 43 on the 4th of july now we had a whole big flight of b-26s and we flew over to sicily and they hit us big time and uh down we went and uh we were on fire so i bailed out and uh put my rip cord a little later when i was when i got to the ground i was captured immediately by the germans down there in this field thirteen raiders would ultimately lose their lives later in world war ii in china jimmy doolittle made a promise to his men colonel doing a little promise to the group it says if we survive survive the mission and i'm going to throw you the biggest party you've ever had after it's all over after the war anyway we had the first reunion and everybody had a good time it was all fun and games and so forth and somebody said why don't we do this again and jimmy said hey wait a minute fellas because this cost me a pretty penny to have this party he says i can't afford to do it and some of the other aviation interests sponsored the in the city itself and after that it was kind of like topsy we began to receive invitations every year it's great to see the gang every year after 10 years mrs doolittle said she put her foot down and said from now on the wives are going to go to these riyodes and that changed the whole tenor of our activities yeah i assure you but from that time on it was a big improvement because we couldn't have kept on the way we were it's not just what they did which was extremely important for the nation at that time but how they've lived their lives since really and they have put together a foundation which supports youngsters coming up in aerospace engineering and so they continue to make contributions wherever they go whatever communities they visit so that they are continuing as an inspiration to the next generation of airmen it seemed like there was a guiding hand favoring us on that whole mission because when you analyzed the whole mission everything went our way and we did the maximum damage that we could do against our enemy with 16 planes each carrying a ton of bombs we really accomplished our mission and of course we upset them so much that their plans brought on the big defeat of midway later so this this little raid accomplished quite a bit in the war after we started having these annual reunions the city of tucson had invited us there and when we got there we found that they had 80 cups silver cups engraved with our names on them in this case those who had who were deceased the cups were upside down and so for the years that went on in all of our reunions some cadets from the air force academy brought this case of cups to our reunion and we had a regular ceremony drinking to those that had passed on this that year and the cups were turned over gentlemen the toast to those who are gone when we get together it seems like uh the raid was yesterday [Music] it's great to see the ones that are still living and we pay homage to the ones that have passed on the mysteriousness of the thing the way it was designed was that in this case that holds the goblets there was a bottle of corvacie that was laid down the same year colonel doolittle was born as the story goes at the end of the trail there will be two raiders sitting together uh with their goblet and us some of their kovacier in the in the cup and that'll be the end of the new little raiders 80 men 68 years later only six of them are still with us yet their tradition dictates that all 80 of them gather either in body or spirit every year on the anniversary of that heroic and historic mission a mission that changed the war [Music] the year 1942 was a fulcrum on which the fate of the world was balanced on june 4th 1942 the momentum of the war in the pacific shifted when the u.s navy sank four japanese carriers during the battle of midway after midway japan did not have another victory in the pacific in the autumn of 42 the british broke out from el alamein they prevented rommel's vaunted africa corps from taking control of the suez canal more importantly they kept germany from gaining free access to the oil of the middle east rommel's defeat was the beginning of the end for the vermont [Music] throughout the merciless russian winter of 1942 two million man armies held a ghastly death grip on each other in and around stalingrad some contend adolf hitler ordered the conquest of stalingrad because of his hatred for joseph stalin some contend that stalin's ego drove his order to defend the city with quote not one step backwards unquote whatever the reasons in six months of street by street combat one million five hundred and thirty thousand had been killed wounded or captured on february 2nd 1943 93 000 german troops surrounded in stalingrad surrendered only 6 000 of them would live to return to germany hitler's army was in retreat in the east from then on there was another pivotal battle that took place in may of 1942 one that was little noted or long remembered following the fall of rangoon in march of 1942 the japanese 56th brigade the elite dragon division poured up the burma road through china's back door the last big obstacle between it and the wartime capital city of cheung king was the sawween river and its mild deep gorge if we had not stopped these people at the shelving river china would have collapsed and if china had collapsed we'd had a different situation in the world on may 7 1942 the 56th brigade seemed unopposed as it flowed up the burma road china's vital supply line until david lee tex hill and seven other american volunteer pilots dived their war-weary sharks tooth p-40s into the mile deep gorge of china's sawween river fitted with 500-pound russian-made bombs the flying tigers made a desperate attempt to prevent the complete collapse of china it was a mission that would change the war in the china burma india theater i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] in a sense david lee tex hill and the 20th century china he loved and defended grew up together when tex was born on the korean peninsula on july 13 1915 the modern republic of china formed after the fall of the qing dynasty in 1912 was a struggling three-year-old i was born a missionary parents i was born in korea and i was the youngest child and daddy's health broke down he'd been out there a long time and i was only a year and a half old so i don't remember a whole lot about career he uh came back to virginia where all of my people are from and uh he worked on grandpa's farm and then he bought her place himself and my earlier recollections there were working out there on the farm well daddy was a great preacher and he got his health back and and started back into preaching in a little church called saint elmore there and he was called to uh louisville kentucky first first presidency and was there a couple years and then he was called to san antonio in 1921. this was a big big church an old church here and people just loved that and he built it into the biggest presbyterian church in the southern assembly [Music] one of dr hill's benefits was the use of a church member's home in the texas hill country near san antonio [Music] texas in particular the west texas of the 1920s was a place that shaped young david hill's world ever after so my earliest recollection of course were my family and my dad was uh predominantly i remembered because uh he was a his great outdoorsman and he took me hunting and fishing he was a great fisherman and hunter and from my earliest days you know i learned to hunt and fish and live in the outdoors in those days living in outdoors you know it wasn't like it is today i mean it was primitive we had our bedding rolls and build a big fire tonight and lie down and uh get up the day light in the morning daddy fixed breakfast but that type of life i enjoyed so much and in a lot of my early days i i've worked on races and uh you know i like that type of life you know anybody i think that that's been in the outdoors it equips them very well you know to do what we were doing later on you know as far as uh fighter pilot operation beneath the boundless texas skies another fascination was growing in the mind of young david hill you know when we first came to san antonio in 21 we had a korean that came over and he lived with us uh dr moon young nim and he taught me how to make kites and koreans great on on kites and uh flying kites uh was really a great hobby i built many of them and he had some very fancy kind of kites that you don't normally see and that kind of got my interest i had a good-looking sister and i had a good-looking custom and uh these the guys from from mckelly would come around with the helmet and goggles on you know i thought that was pretty cool you know david lee hill's growing fixation with flying finally pushed him to commit an uncharacteristic act a guy by the name of chet schluter and i decided we were going to take an airplane ride so we took our collection money and slipped off from church and went out here to a place called winburn field but it's right over there near stenson actually we paid this guy a dollar takes us around the pattern a guy named dick hare was a pilot and in a travel area you could always tell her because the hill runs stuck out further than the wings and uh pilot sits in the back and you got a seat side by side seat in front [Music] [Music] i just remembered it was just a real thrill and then began to worry about my conscience taking taking my collection money on sunday for an airplane ride young david lee was also intrigued by his father's remembrances of the far east i didn't want to get back to the far east and i'd heard daddy speak about it tex hill would indeed return to the far east but as a boy hunting and fishing the west texas hill country in the 1920s he could never have imagined the circumstances under which he would make the journey a world away from texas hills west texas four thousand years of dynastic rule in china were coming to a complicated end modern china was born in october 1911 in a military uprising that led to the abdication of china's last emperor the birth of the chinese republic brought with it great promise and great danger the nation that rose from the ashes of the old chinese dynasties would in the next century shake the world not once but many times the people of china have shared a common culture for more than four thousand years longer than any other civilization on earth the earliest chinese settled in northern china in the valley of the yellow river around 3000 bc they farmed the fertile river valley made pottery wove silk cloth and used simple wheeled carts the history of china prior to the 20th century could be characterized as a continual struggle against foreign occupation the first known dynasty appeared in 1766 bc the xiang dynasty new methods of agriculture helped give rise to a highly developed system of king nobles commoners and slaves with well-organized armies the shang kings unified the region and defended it against nomadic raiders shang craftsman worked in bronze and jade the cho overthrew the shong kings about three thousand years ago and the cho dynasty lasted for 900 years iron tools opened more land to farming and created food surpluses a middle class arose cho kings unified the country created the first national library in 550 bc and supported priests scholars and teachers among the scholars was the philosopher confucius his code of ethics developed around 500 bc was the foundation of chinese thought and culture for the next two and a half thousand years the cho kings worshiped heaven as a deity they and all of the kings and emperors to follow would be called sons of heaven and china would be called the celestial empire ancestor worship emerged during the cho dynasty and it is still a strong influence in all asian cultures the early cho kings ruled a realm that was divided among some 200 nobles similar to the feudal system of medieval europe strong nobles overthrew weaker princes until by 400 bc there are only seven states in the kingdom each ruled by a noble family in 221 bc the strongest of these noble families the chin declared themselves emperor their reign lasted less than 100 years but it left two important legacies the qin gave the country its name china and replaced the feudal system with a centralized bureaucracy for the next two thousand years china was ruled by a series of emperors some strong some weak the country was divided and unified many times over chinese emperors built the world's first university in 221 bc built the great wall standardized weights and measures and created a civil service based on merit and education the chinese invented the world's first sundials water clocks wheelbarrows compasses paper canal locks firearms and super ships immense sea going junks that could carry 1 000 passengers over and over again the settled farms and cities of china were attacked by nomadic foreigners from all sides the chinese called all such foreigners barbarians mongols from the northern plains conquered china in the 13th century their short 90-year rule left a much larger legacy in the west when the venetian merchant marco polo wrote about his travels to china he described the court of mongol kubla khan his book marco polo's travels was a best seller in europe for 300 years in the late 1600s china entered a long period of peace and prosperity under the qing emperors western traders and missionaries were welcomed but the army was neglected and a population boom brought a shortage of land and a rise in poverty in the 19th century two wars against western powers the so-called opium wars left china defeated and humiliated forced to open its markets and ports to free trade with the west poverty war and foreign meddling in internal affairs led to several rebellions that ravaged china's economy and weakened its emperor the boxer rebellion of 1898 was aimed at expelling all foreigners from the celestial empire it failed the terms of the peace imposed by japan and the western powers humiliated the chinese and rallied support for nationalist revolutionaries one of the leaders who emerged from the turbulent 1890s was dr sun yat-sen a physician who advocated replacing the manchu dynasty with a republic after a failed uprising in canton in 1895 dr sun fled the country and lived in self-imposed exile traveling and enlisting support for his revolution in october 1911 chinese soldiers staged a rebellion in wuhan within two months all the southern central and northwestern provinces had declared independence from the emperor's rule in february the manchu emperor abdicated peacefully ending more than 2 000 years of imperial government soon yat-sen returned from exile to lead a transitional government in the new republic of china in march 1912 sunyat sen stepped down from the presidency and yoon shikhai former commander of the northern army took his place several revolutionary groups merged to form the national people's party the quo mean tang general juan set up a republican government headed by a premier and cabinet he drafted a constitution and laid plans for a parliamentary election in early 1913 but behind the scenes juan had his opponents assassinated and moved to sideline the parliament and weakened the constitution less than three years after his inauguration juan declared himself president for life and began scheming to make himself emperor but in 1915 japan exploited the turmoil with a list of demands for special trading rights and other privileges the resulting crisis shattered juan's control and he died in 1916. finally in 1921 sunyat sen succeeded in forming a new republican government and in 1921 david lee hill was an impetuous eight-year-old attending traverse elementary school in san antonio texas well i was always in some sort of trouble i went to travis school of saying i remember miss barry who was a principal uh she uh back in those days you know they believed very much in corporal punishment and uh i had a run in with miss barry and uh and uh she broke out the switch [Music] [Music] world war one ended with the treaty of versailles in 1919. china had joined the allies in declaring war on germany at the peace conference in france the chinese demanded an end to foreign treaty ports and other concessions in china their demands were ignored and they felt disillusioned and betrayed there were angry demonstrations in beijing and other cities the government frustrated with its western allies turned to russia for help the communist party of china led by a peasant named mao se tung held its first conference in 1921 but it was so small that the soviet union gave its support to sunyat sen's khun min tang or kmt soviet aide built up the kmt army soon died in 1926 and was succeeded by chiang kai-shek chang was born october 31 1887 to an upper middle class family of salt merchants he would go on to become one of the most powerful and controversial military and political leaders of the 20th century growing up in a tumultuous china racked by military defeats at the hands of foreign powers and civil wars among warlords chang decided to pursue a military career ironically chang entered a preparatory school for chinese students in japan the imperial japanese army academy it was here that he was influenced to support the movement to overthrow the qing dynasty and establish a chinese republic chang returned to china in 1911 to serve as an artillery officer for the revolutionary forces over the next decade with political guile and personal loyalty he gained soon yet sends trust on june 5th 1925 he became generalissimo commander in chief of the national revolutionary army in 1926 chang launched an expedition to subdue the northern warlords he accepted soviet aid but began throwing communists out of the nationalist party by 1928 the warlords were reigned in and the country was once again unified chang continued to suppress the communists they began organizing in the countryside and their numbers grew quickly fueled by anger over the slow pace of land reforms in late 1931 they declared a separate chinese soviet republic in the south with mao as chairman chang began a series of brutal extermination campaigns to destroy the communist party and in chiang's preoccupation with the communists and disloyal warlords the expansionist japanese saw opportunity [Music] i went to the san antonio academy i graduated in 28 military school one though it is the oldest multi-school it's something like 120 years old but at that time there was a high school level and the uh the professors they had to be tough because they had some tough guys in there my older brothers especially like the other day i was at the alumni day and and uh because i'm a white rabbit i mean i'm the oldest living graduate and uh i just told these kids i said you know you guys are the hope in the world i said if you guys don't make it i mean this country's gone because uh we have nothing we can do at our age and i said just remember this to any audience that i've ever talked to that if you see a guy in uniform you better get on your knees and thank god because that is the only guy in the world that can save you in the fall of 1928 tex hill enrolled in the mccauley school another prestigious military school near chattanooga tennessee his restlessness and pranks earned him many disciplinary restrictions when he graduated at 17 tex was ready to enlist in the navy but his father had other ideas he strongly encouraged him to enter college tex graduated from austin college in 1938 showing that in the paper was looking for pilots so i went down and took the exam before gradually you had to have a college degree now i tried to get into the army air corps earlier and i was turned down and i don't know why you could go in with two years like uh two years of college i this good day i still don't know why i was turned down and uh i don't know whether it was my eyes or or what i i just don't know but anyway it was kind of funny to wind up after korea and the navy and everything then in july 42 when our group broke up you know the army air corps wanted me were bad in china the japanese were capitalizing on the domestic turmoil facing generalissimo chiang kai-shek and the nationalist chinese japan saw manchuria as a limitless supply of raw materials a market for her manufactured goods now excluded from many western countries by depression-era tariffs and as a protective buffer state against the soviet union in siberia japan occupied manchuria in 1931 and set up a puppet government in northern china there was the growing anti-japanese feeling in china but chang ignored it he declared that he would deal with japanese aggression only after he had dealt with the communists finally in late 1936 the kuomintang army forced chang to give up his anti-communist campaigns form an alliance with the chinese communist party and face the japanese threat head-on six months later a skirmish between chinese and japanese troops at beijing's marco polo bridge set off the spark that ignited all-out war between china and japan in 1937 when china's resistance to japanese aggression escalated into the largest asian land war in history the military career of tex hill was just getting started the career of an army air corps pilot who would change tex hill's life forever was seemingly coming to an end [Music] claire lee chennault was born september 6 1893 in commerce texas and raised in waterproof louisiana a tiny farming town in the mississippi delta he had a pleasant childhood tom sawyer-ish by some accounts though he later described himself as something of a loner he attended a one-room schoolhouse and in 1909 entered louisiana state university at baton rouge he was a good student and participated in rotc and in basketball baseball and track he also applied to west point in annapolis as an adult chanult always gave his birth year as 1890 adding three years to his age after one semester at lsu he transferred to a teacher's college and a year later in 1910 at age 17. went to work as the teacher and principal of a country school near shreveport chanult married nellie thompson on christmas day 1911 and left teaching to find work that would support a family the united states entered the first world war in april 1917. chanult quit his job at a tire factory joined the u.s army and earned the rank of first lieutenant stationed at fort travis in san antonio texas he was near kelly field the army's pilot training base chennault snagged an assignment to kelly field as a drill instructor he was still at kelly field when the war ended and he finally got the assignment he had hoped for as a u.s army aviation cadet private flying lessons have taught him some bad habits and a civilian instructor at kelly washed him out of the aviation program a second check ride with a military pilot got him reinstated and he earned his u.s army wings in april 1919. he served a brief tour patrolling the mexican border and was given a routine discharge into the army reserve when congress expanded the army air service in 1920 chennault re-entered active service as a flying officer he served mostly in non-flying assignments until 1922 when he was sent to the famous hat in the ring squadron the 94th at ellington field texas chennault proved to be a superb pilot after a year in the 94th he was given command of the 19th pursuit squadron based on ford island at pearl harbor hawaii and chanel flew coastal patrols and set up an early warning system of aircraft spotters deafness was a common problem among military pilots of the day who flew open cockpit airplanes chanult was no exception he flew with a medical waiver for deafness logging over 1300 hours in the air in 1930 with the rank of captain chanault was sent to the air corps tactical school and joined the faculty as head of the pursuit section it was the birthplace of the doctrine of precision daylight bombing the idea that fast heavily armed bombers would always get through to their targets a tight-knit group of officers who became known as the bomber mafia believe that the bombers speed high-altitude long-range heavy armament and tight formations would overcome any defenses thrown at them [Music] boeing's new yb17 bomber seemed to confirm these claims the prototype that would become the b-17 flying fortress could fly faster and higher than the army's front-line fighters and it bristled with guns no anti-aircraft shell can reach it and no pursuit plane can catch it so said the advocates of daylight strategic bombing they claimed that fighter escorts would be unnecessary besides they said even the best pursuit planes lacked the speed and the range needed to escort the bomber as a student at the tactical school chanult met captain clayton bissell a world war one ace bissell was a true believer in the bomber doctrine chennault disagreed the army had recently received the new boeing's p12 biplane the world's fastest and most agile pursuit aircraft chanult believed that pursuit planes like the p12 could shoot down bombers but said chanult progress would also bring faster more capable pursuit aircraft bissell and others believed that the age of the pursuit plane was over while the bomber mafia won converts in washington chennault practiced aerobatics and thought about pursuit tactics against bombers he and bissell would clash again over tactics in china during world war ii the commander of the tactical school asked chanault to form an exhibition flight team for the army flying p-12s they put on a three-plane aerobatic show like no other [Music] at the team's final performance in late 1935 there were two men in the audience who would later have profound influence on the life and career of claire chennault one was william pauley a salesman who represented the curtis wright aircraft company in china the other was mao pang chu a senior officer in the chinese air force both men were impressed by what they saw that day mao offered to hire all three pilots as flight instructors for the chinese chanel's two fellow pilots accepted the offer and soon left for china chanault declined in italy general julio duet declared that bomber formations could reach any city and that fighter aircraft would be useless against heavily armed bombers dewey's ideas became required reading at the u.s army air corps tactical school the us army's 1931 war games had only strengthened the argument when pursuit planes were unable to catch a single bomber chanel's experience on the aerobatic team convinced him more than ever that fighters could shoot down bombers diving attacks concentrated gunnery and teamwork he argued for better tactics better communications and an early warning system that could direct fighters to incoming bomber formations but in washington and other places that mattered the bomber mafia had won the argument chanult was seen as a difficult officer a competent leader who argued too much with his superiors the funny thing is is that chanel had been right all along about the requirements for fighters versus bombers and how he's an outcast in his own air force he's given a foreign air force in which he could implement it and his tactical decision was to use the best fighters he could obtain which in the event turned out to be p-40s and used their maximum capabilities and he knew that the from observation he knew what the japanese strengths were he had seen the nakademis and the mitsubishi's over china and he knew that they were good airplanes but that they had certain qualities which could be offset by the qualities of the p-40 so he was playing a winning hand although it seemed you know that it would be hard to define that to begin with he actually knew what he was doing he actually knew what tactics to use and and he was able to achieve what he wanted to do chanult's health was also a problem he was active and energetic but he was flying on a medical waiver for his deafness and his chain smoking up to three packs of unfiltered camels a day was catching up with him chanult could see that his military career was effectively over promoted to major he was sent to the 20th pursuit group as its executive officer there flight surgeons grounded him then sent him to the hospital the army invited him to retire which he did in 1937. he and nellie had bought a farm near waterproof louisiana nelly was content there but chanel was not he had been quietly negotiating with the chinese to study and analyze the chinese air force a three-month assignment at far above his army pay the day after he retired from the army chanult boarded a ship in san francisco bound for china tex hill had a date to keep in appalachia florida he had enlisted in the united states navy as a seaman second class along with 110 other candidates he was now going to florida to try to gain acceptance for flight training i rode a motorcycle down there going through louisiana i would like to hit those goggles and just have to stop and wipe your tires off or even see never seen anything like it but i got down to opalaca and they wouldn't let me keep it on the base so i went through and uh made it down there there were 12 of us out of 110 10 of us out of that 12 were sent to pensacola for flight training i rode my motorcycle back and uh sold it i'm sorry because it was the first 61 harley as a harley 61 his first one that came out that had the overhead valves on it i've actually called it a knucklehead it that my bike was today would be worth a lot of money and uh at pensacola uh the the training was uh probably the best in the world we had almost 13 months training and when you came out of there well you you're qualified to do anything you're ready to go to the fleet texas training was thorough and intense there was 55 hours of aerobatics and gunnery in an f4b4 then primary seaplanes the n3n on floats then to squadron 3 and steerman's then to instrument and fighter training and in training tex showed the characteristic self-confidence that would later make him an air force legend you know everybody you know always threatened wonder where you go pass these checks not because a heck of a lot to do with the instructor or they can teach you to fly because then they got other check pilots that are going to check you but uh i've always you know i had confidence in myself i know i mean i know what i can do and what i can't do luckily like this old friend of mine gave me some sage advice he said thanks don't ever lie to yourself yeah i went to the saratoga and i was flying tbd's uh i never forget when i reported on board there was a guy took me in hand by the name of bob jose he had been in a much earlier class like when he had cadets on my orientation rod good god he was looping that damn thing and doing rolls in it and and boy i think you'd wash that real fast if you'd have done anything like that you know in pensacola i have not the airplane through it all tex held his desire to return to the far east of his birth i had no no problems uh but i didn't want to get back to the far east and i'd heard daddy speak about it as a missionary and i wanted to get back over there and we had a heavy cruise over there called houston the navy was real good about letting you make a transfer well i'd put in for a transfer to the houston well fortunately it didn't go through houston cut sun i was transferred to the east coast to the ranger flying uh sb2u dive bombers it was kind of interesting because we actually were involved in war before we really were and the way we were involved we were operating out of bermuda where these convoys would make up the brits uh had a uh uh task force that would escort these people and kind of shepherd them you know the convoys going over with supplies as fate would have it tex hill would indeed be involved in the war before we really were but it would not be as a member of the us navy and he would return to the far east unbeknownst to tex half a world away an aviation visionary who had been driven out of his own air force was busy readying his accommodations we were stationed in norfolk and walked into uh the ready room and uh and his guest radio he said here's some guys who'll go with you he was our operations officer we didn't even know what he's talking about you know and he introduces us to amanda irvine and he said uh commander irvine said we're looking for volunteers to keep the burma road open so supplies can flow into china and um we didn't even know where burma was he pulled a big map down this is burma this is bourbon road supplies going on up into china so i would like to just get back anyway but ed rector and me and bert chrisman and there were seven of us off our carrier wanted to go [Music] the way we were actually structured uh so sinatra come to the states uh china air force has been decimated there's been name only and uh they needed an instant air force if they're gonna stay in the war and snort came back and half arnold george marshall admiral tower stepson they were they're all against it they said it's just when not pipe dreams so it's knocked through a guy named joe also who has ken to the president some way so he was able to set up a meeting with cinahl and roosevelt and sonora convinced roosevelt if you want to keep china's war they said you have to have an instant air force over there so they set up all this stuff that's a funny thing because his requirement was one that he wanted a hundred fighter pilots for 500 pursuit experience and general arnold told him said they said so now if i were to give you that many airplanes without many pilots of that kind of experience they said you'd fold up my entire process like and she not always endeared himself by saying generally if you can't spare that many people that kind of experience you don't have to pursue such to begin with [Music] 1937 for the second time in 40 years japan is attempting to make territorial gains within the borders of china two years before the onset of world war ii in europe and four years before the japanese attack on pearl harbor the largest asian land war in history is raging the suffering of the civilian population is as horrendous as it is widespread much of it is a result of the indiscriminate bombings of civilian population centers bombings which go virtually unchallenged by the chinese air force in 1937 conventional military wisdom stated the bombers would always get through that modern bombers self-protected by unborn ordinance could not be stopped by pursuit or fighter aircraft not everyone agreed as a captain in the u.s army air corps claire l chanolt had argued up and down with his superiors that with the right tactics pursuit aircraft could effectively defend against the bombers in fact chanult effectively argued himself into a premature retirement from the u.s army air corps at age 42. in china theoretical debates meant little as fate would have it in the cauldron of the second sino-japanese war with the whole world watching claire chennault would be given a second chance a chance to prove the tactical worth of pursuit aircraft in real-time combat conditions but first he would have to find airplanes and pilots with which to do it to save the now decimated chinese air force chanult needed trained experienced fighter pilots from outside china he needed a cadre of u.s pilots willing to risk their military careers to help defend a nation and a culture a half a world away a proud ancient culture that was being brought to its knees by modern weaponry chanult needed men like triple ace david lee tex hill men who were willing to fly combat even though their own country was not yet in the war men who were willing and able to fly missions that changed the war i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] well i think he would have walked through fire a general chanel he just almost idolized him he respected him so and believed in him so that he would he would have done anything he asked him and i would have never questioned it not not in the heat of war at all i don't i don't think people felt that way i certainly never did he just a huge uh competency just i i know that i was impressed right if you told me to go through that wall i'd let go the day after he officially retired from the army claire l chennault who had been quietly negotiating with the chinese a three-month assignment to analyze the chinese air force boarded a ship in san francisco bound for china just a few days earlier aircraft from the german luftwaffe had bombed the city of guernica spain in support of the nationalist troops of francisco franco the raid killed hundreds of civilians the world saw it as a terror bombing a grisly confirmation of the prevailing wisdom about strategic bombers [Music] in route to china chanult's ship docked overnight in kobe on japan's main island chanult and a companion spent the time ashore doing some amateur spying on japanese civil defense measures the next stop was shanghai china a so-called treaty city shanghai was governed and garrisoned by several western countries including britain and the united states outside of shanghai hong kong and a few other treaty cities china was a patchwork of rulers and alliances the soviet union and chinese communists controlled northern provinces the japanese occupied manchuria and independent warlords held the rest of the country generalissimo chiang kai-shek was the leader of china's nationalist party the kuo min tang but his rule was limited to the yangtze river delta in central china western allies considered chang to be china's leader but to many chinese he was merely the strongest of the warlords in june 1937 when chennault arrived in shanghai china and japan were not officially at war there had been intermittent fighting since 1931 local skirmishes that both sides described as incidents china was wracked by civil war on one side the kuo min tang led by chiang kai-shek on the other the chinese communists led by mao seiton in 1931 japan exploited the turmoil to invade manchuria japanese propaganda presented the invasion as a holy war aimed at uniting all of asia under japanese rule by 1935 japan controlled northern china through a puppet government and the japanese were exploiting internal conflicts to expand their influence china appealed to the league of nations for help against the invaders the league issued a weak condemnation of japan's invasion of manchuria but appeasement was the policy of the day and no other country was willing to intervene in any meaningful way through the nineteen thirties both countries had reasons to avoid all-out war the kuo min tang needed to unify its warring internal factions and defeat the chinese communists the japanese wanted to avoid any foreign intervention especially by the united states in shanghai china was introduced to madame chiang kai-shek the generalissimo's young charming and beautiful wife was raised in the u.s and educated at wellesley college she was a modernist in contrast to her traditionalist husband and in 1936 she took on the role of secretary general of the chinese commission on aeronautical affairs it was she who had hired claire chennault [Music] in 1937 claire l chenold a recently retired captain in the u.s army air corps traveled to china for a three-month assignment to evaluate the chinese air force for generalissimo chiang kai-shek and the head of the air force his wife madam chang after meeting madame chang in shanghai chanult traveled to nan king chanel met with general chao chi zhou commander of the chinese air force the caf ciao's italian advisor general silvio scaroni also briefed chanolt from there chanult went on to visit several caf airfields and flight schools including the primary flight school run by americans at hangzhou early july found him at lu yang for italian pilots ran a flight school assembled airplanes and flew combat missions against the chinese communists [Music] on july 7 1937 the imperial japanese army stormed the marco polo bridge a key access point to beijing prior to this incident the chinese central government had pursued a policy of first internal pacification before external resistance but this incident marked the breaking point of japanese aggression it was time to focus first on the foreign enemy chang took direct command of the chinese central government army and air force full-scale war was now at hand claire chennault immediately offered his services to the chinese he was sent to nan chang a dusty city in china's interior to train the caf pilots for war on july 23 he sent a discouraging report to the generalissimo on the caf's readiness for combat its warplanes included a hundred obsolete curtis hawk biplanes 21 italian german and american-built bombers and ten boeing p-26 fighters its pilots were poorly trained barely able to handle docile trainers much less front-line fighter planes the chinese army's combat readiness was not much better with very little military industrial strength china had few armored forces and no mechanized divisions still chang knew that to win international support he had to prove that his armies could fight chang struck back at the japanese at the port city of shanghai the japanese cruiser itzumo was anchored there providing artillery support for the invaders the chinese air force with chanult as advisor was ordered to silence idzumo's guns the air attack was a disaster the chinese bombardiers failed to adjust and drop most of their loads on the city killing some three thousand civilians [Music] the fighter pilots that channeled was training had a better day from taiwan the japanese sent 18 mitsubishi g3m nail bombers to hit chinese airfields chinese fighters jumped them at hangzhou destroying three with no losses of their own [Music] the next day another 16 nil bombers attacked nan king they were unescorted and the chinese fighters down four and damaged another six on that same day the japanese aircraft carrier kaga sent 12 mitsubishi b2m biplane bombers to attack hangzhou only one returned chanult was earning his instructor's pay but by late august japanese fighters were escorting the bombers the chinese biplane hawks were no match for the fast and agile escorts open cockpit monoplanes with fixed landing gear similar to the boeing p-26 channel like most westerners did not believe that the japanese could design or build advanced aircraft the new escorts were at first thought to be german high schools or french duo teams they were in fact mitsubishi a5ms allied named claude a japanese designed and direct ancestor of the japanese zero assigned to set up air defenses at nan king chennault established a simple but effective early warning system spotters at locations around the city reported by army field telephones to a map room in the city stadium where incoming bogies were plotted to control the fighters chanult put a radio in each leader's airplane so the plotters at the stadium could vector the fighters to intercept the incoming enemy planes shanghai and hangzhou adopted similar systems as japanese bombers and escort fighters began to dominate the daytime skies chanult shifted his forces to dawn and dust grades he trained his bomber pilots by mocking up japanese ships with patterns of lights on the runways when the bombers attacked the ships their searchlights and muzzle flashes guided the bombers in and their bombs damaged several japanese warships chinolt often accompanied these missions as an observer evaluating chinese and japanese tactics from the cockpit of a curtis hawk [Music] the imperial japanese army captured shanghai in november 1937 at the cost of a quarter of a million casualties the capture of shanghai opened the way to nan king china's former capital city nan king fell on december 13th japanese troops entering the city embarked on a bloodbath known as the rape of nan hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed chinese soldiers were murdered and between twenty thousand and eighty thousand chinese women were raped by japanese soldiers in six weeks of terror in nanking [Music] an international mix of mercenary pilots descended on china in the wake of the japanese invasion of shanghai idealists thrill-seekers out-of-work airline and airmail pilots most of them claimed combat experience in world war one their flying skills ran from excellent to non-existent their skill at carousing was uniformly high chanult organized them into the caf 14th squadron and began weeding out the incompetence and training the rest based at hang cow the 14th was equipped with 30 volte light bombers the squadron flew its first mission with four voltes on 23 january 1938 two of the bombers turned back and one crashed the remaining bomber failed to find its target soon after that abortive raid japanese bombers attacked hang cow the vaultes were lined up wingtip to wingtip fueled and armed a bomb hit one of them and the entire line was incinerated chang was frustrated with his german and italian advisors and he sacked them he was sorely in need of serviceable airplanes and competent pilots rebuffed by the western allies he turned to the russians in exchange for chinese raw materials the soviet union provided more than 300 aircraft battle-proven i-15 and i-16 fighters and twin-engine tupolev sb bombers arriving in china over the winter of 1937-38 half the russian airplanes came with their own pilots and mechanics the rest were turned over to caf units and crews the japanese protested to the soviet union which ignored the complaints the united states more sensitive to neutrality issues tried to convince american pilots to leave china and stop others from entering other western nations followed suit soon nearly all the pilots defending china against the japanese were chinese or russian the russians did not like or trust chinolt he was sending regular reports to washington on japanese airplanes and tactics as the russians suspected he was also reporting on their strengths and weaknesses [Music] chang continued to shake up his headquarters staff he kicked chu chi zhao off the aeronautical commission and sent him to kunming in the far western province of yunnan near the border with burma chanult went with him to help him set up caf flight schools chanult was not happy in kunming he was no longer part of shang's inner circle and his health suffered in yunnan's damp chilly climate but with the help of 18 other americans he set up primary intermediate and advanced flight schools around yunnan province [Applause] the imperial japanese army numbering 750 000 men pushed the chinese west chang moved his capital to chongqing about 500 miles northeast of kunming japan could never have conquered all of china the chinese could have just kept retreating and there would never be enough japanese available to control the areas and the japanese were not interested in doing that they were interested in controlling the areas that had resources that were useful to them the ports and the arable areas as they retreated the chinese burned bridges tore up roads and blocked rivers behind them the two sides settled into a stalemate their armies separated by a 100 mile wide no-man's land [Music] chongqing a city of 200 000 swelled to a million souls as chinese soldiers officials and refugees poured into it in frustration tokyo ordered massive bombing raids against chinese cities in the world's first major bombing campaign against civilian targets imperial japanese army and navy planes hit every major city in china and left millions of chinese civilians dead injured and homeless it was probably counterproductive it probably caused more ill will about against the japanese around the world than they gain from doing the bombing but the japanese at the time if they had a weapon they like to use it chang avoided any full-scale land battles his troops were poorly trained poorly equipped and often badly led warlords whose loyalty to the nationalist government was in doubt commanded many of his divisions chang preferred to let his allies beat the japanese while he held back his own troops saving them for a later fight against the chinese communists chinese units did wage a brutal guerrilla war against the japanese and despite terrible losses chinese morale remained high the japanese now controlled china's seaports a narrow gauge railway built by the french ran from saigon in french indochina to kunming but the french closed the railway under pressure from the japanese government supplies for the chinese army and air force had to come through the british colony of burma to the west by sea to rangoon by rail truck or barge to lashio burma then over the himalayas along the ancient silk route 717 torturous miles to kunming the chinese had begun improving the lashio kunming road in 1937. [Applause] [Music] two hundred thousand forced laborers have leveled straightened and widened the road and paved it with stones the new road climbed through mountain ranges nine thousand feet high plunged into river canyons five thousand feet deep crossed gorges on chain suspension bridges and negotiated steep slopes on miles and miles of wicked switchbacks when it was completed in 1939 it was china's only major supply route journalists called it the burma road a few critical supplies reached kunming by air from burma or india but that was just a trickle guns and ammunition tanks and artillery fuel aircraft and spares virtually everything the chinese army and air force needed came over the treacherous burma road by truck mule train elephant and on foot but the british were nervous about the burma road they were worried that allowing their colony to be used as a supply route for china would offend the japanese for months in mid 1940 while the british dithered war materials meant for yunnan piled up on the docks at rangoon [Music] finally in october britain gave up trying to make peace with imperial japan and reopened the supply route to china [Applause] [Music] in the spring of 1940 hitler's vermont swept through denmark norway holland luxembourg and finally france a british army sent to oppose the germans was driven back to the beaches of dunkirk in a hasty retreat to england in europe britain now stood alone against hitler's dreams of vampire in washington president roosevelt began pushing a reluctant america toward aiding the british taking advantage of france's defeat the japanese occupied french indochina with its vast resources of rubber and rice and a strategic airfield near hanoi [Music] [Music] by the summer of 1940 the japanese were making daily bombing attacks on chinese cities nearly 100 bombers hit chun king alone each day in september from their new base at hanoi japanese bombers began striking at kunming and other caf training fields in yunnan chanal's chinese pilots were fighting valiantly chung king was beyond the range of japanese fighters and the mitsubishi nail bombers were unescorted chinese fighters shot down nine of the twin engine bombers and damaged 300 a serious toll by japanese standards [Music] fast agile and mounting 20 millimeter cannons the new escorts destroyed 13 chinese fighters in one day the new kid on the block was the mitsubishi a6m 0. chanult studied the zero carefully and sent detailed descriptions to washington his dispatchers were mostly ignored common wisdom declared that the japanese were not capable of designing and building a superior fighter but the zero was far superior to chinese fighters it was equal or superior to america's frontline fighter planes the imperial japanese fighters and bombers far outnumbered the small chinese air force [Music] [Applause] [Music] the generalissimo and madame chang began pressuring the united states to provide high-performance aircraft and skilled american pilots to defend china america was not yet at war with japan and the output of its aircraft factories was promised to england but china and the changs had powerful friends in washington dc madam chang's brother tv sung was china's top lobbyist in washington a harvard graduate and a skilled diplomat sung was well liked and well respected in the american corridors of power in communiques to washington chiang kai-shek warned of the consequences of a japanese victory in china half a million imperial japanese troops no longer needed on the continent could sweep southward through the philippines malaysia and singapore to australia the situation was dire finally in october of 1940 chang told chanult you must go to the u.s china air force has been decimated there's been name only and they needed an instant air force if they're going to stay in the water [Applause] [Music] so [Music] chanult went personally to general george marshall u.s military chief to secure marshall's support for military aid i think that everybody realized that something had to be done for china they didn't want japan to be able to have a victory in china and not be occupied there and to be able to use his forces elsewhere he wanted to supplement it and so when there became an avenue to a sell curtis airplanes and b provide aid to china inexpensively and also c do it covertly which sort of appealed to roosevelt with the help of several influential americans including treasury secretary henry morgenthau soon arranged to buy more than 300 american-built aircraft for china britain agreed to release its claim on a shipment of curtis p-40 tomahawk fighter planes in return for a more advanced version of the p-40 and in december the deal was approved 100 curtis p-40s to china by spring soon also lobbied for boeing b-17 bombers but army chief of staff general george marshall said no the b-17s would go to england they had hoped for you know substantial amounts of airplanes i think 500 airplanes was their goal they finally won up with i think less than 100 slightly less than 100 and those were not all immediately assembled they got a few odds and ends some volte p66s and a few other things that came in that were not useful to them but in the actu as it turned out he got enough p-40s that he could equip the avg and but more importantly and he got the pilots to persuade the chinese to buy the p-40s the u.s was offering chanult took a chinese delegation to bowling field near washington dc where ironically a young john allison demonstrated the airplane with a show of aerobatics the irony is it was the same john allison who would later win the silver star in the cbi theater flying for tex hill in the 23rd fighter group tex hill was one of the outstanding individuals tex was a very brave individual uh lots of courage also a good head for what was going to happen and what we wanted to happen and what and the best way to go about it so i flew with tex frequently in the setting up missions and then i flew with him also as a member of his fighter team so i got to know him very well he was completely honest tried to do what chanel wanted to do the way china wanted it done and the chinese official said we need a hundred of these airplanes and chennault said no you need a hundred men like this the china lobby also persuaded president roosevelt to allow chanel to recruit pilots and ground crews from the u.s army navy and marines they made a decision that they would allow american flyers military pilots resign their commissions and become part of a volunteer group that would become a sort of foreign legion and i think in the back of everybody's mind there's the lafayette escodrill as was there as an example and chanel came back he'd been out there since 1937. he came back and half arnold george marshall admiral tower stepson they were they're all against it they said it's just winter snow's pipe dreams american generals and admirals opposed any recruitment of their personnel and chennault was almost arrested at one naval base when he arrived to recruit pilots and mechanics but letters signed by the military chiefs of staff were chanult's trump cards and the project went ahead in december chennault also briefed marshall personally about the japanese zero marshall was concerned chanult described a plane that was better than anything in the american arsenal the general passed the information to the state department and to military commanders but it was scoffed at or ignored the first batch of 35 p 40s left new york harbor on the 19th of february 1941 on a cargo ship bound down the atlantic around the horn of africa and across the indian ocean to rangoon the voyage took three months each plane was in two crates one for the fuselage and one for the single piece wing they came from the factory missing some key components that chanult or his agents had to purchase separately allison engines from general motors radios from rca guns from the cult manufacturing company and gun sites from the us army these were shipped with the second batch of aircraft at rangoon much of the heavy lifting was done by hand mobs of indian and chinese workers muscled the crates onto trucks then opened the crates and muscled the wings and fuselages to the assembly area and the planes were towed 10 miles to mingalidone airport for final assembly in the tropical sun the planes became too hot to touch so the assembly work was done under open air thatched roof shelters two of the planes were lost before they left the docks one was missing so many parts it would never be air worthy and a wing crate was accidentally dunked in the harbor when it was opened two days later salt corrosion had ruined the wing both planes were set aside for spare parts the first of the p-40s was test flown on june 12th the p-40 was in effect the lash up it took the p-36 and they put an allison engine on it and converted to from the p-36 to the p-40 and uh it had a integral wing a one-piece wing that was very very strong and that provided a lot of strength to its structure so the p-40 was greatest quality was that it was available it had been put into production and there were a lot of them coming off the production lines and and pilots were familiar with it and so it had the quality of speed of about 340 350 miles an hour which was not the fastest in the world but but competitive not the most maneuverable in the world but strong able to dive and it had 650 caliber machine guns which gave it a lot of firepower compared to the to the japanese airplanes and so chanel knew this and he devised the tactics and climbed and died of zoom get above the japanese formation come to the japanese formation shooting dive away from it and recover someplace else and then make another attack and in no cases do you dog fight with with any of the japanese fighters which was absolutely the correct way to fight the airplane recruiting for pilots and ground crews began in april chanult hired three recruiters for what was now known as the american volunteer group or avg skip adair had come home from china after his caf flight school in yunnan was closed rutledge irvine was a retired navy commander and richard allworth was an army pilot who rumor said had flown with the lafayette eska drill before world war one officially the central aircraft manufacturing company camco set up by william pauley of curtis aircraft as a front for aid to the chinese air force hired avg personnel camco's employment contracts were masterpieces of ambiguity pilots were offered six hundred dollars a month 675 for flight leaders plus a vague promise for a 500 bonus for every confirmed kill ground crewmen were offered 300 a month these pay rates were far above u.s military pay but we loaned the money to the chinese and they contracted with camco to buy the airplanes to pay the whole thing to fund the whole operation do you know that our biggest cost of the 13 million dollars for that year is operation uh we bought our airplanes with that we paid 7 million and a half 75 000 a piece for the p-40s and the only reason we got them is because the british were promised the upgraded version of the p-40 and they cut a hundred p-40b models off of their line because they were to get the next generation p40 and so that's where we were able to get in business some signed on for the money some for adventure or for the chance to travel some out of boredom with peacetime military duties [Music] war with germany was looming and some pilots signed up for china because they believed fighting the japanese would be less dangerous than fighting the germans the recruiters often claimed that the japanese were poor pilots flying second-rate airplanes besides some prospects were told you'll mostly be shooting down unarmed cargo planes chanult wanted qualified fighter pilots he got some but the rest were a mixed bag seaplane pilots with little time in land planes and low time pilots who inflated their flying experience the quality of the recruits improved only after chanal ordered his recruiters to be truthful and more selective one of aldwerth's recruits was gregory boyington part cherokee and a 28 year old marine corps lieutenant and a flight instructor at pensacola boyington was a hard drinker and a scrappy brawler qualities that would not always endear him to chanult irvine's first two prospects were a pair of navy dive bomber pilots eddie rector and david tex hill we were stationed in norfolk and walked into uh ready room and uh operations there on shore and uh and there's just ready on he said here's some guys who'll go with you he was our operations officer we didn't even know what he's talking about you know and he introduces us to amanda irvine he said uh commander irvine said we're looking for volunteers to keep burma road open so supplies can flow into china so i was like just get back anyway everybody made it very clear the contract was very lucrative that he explained to us you know but we did in the navy uh you got a complete discharge i mean there wasn't any reserve status or anything he lost a year's service because we eventually got it back but uh at the time they they washed their hands of all the volunteers that came out of the navy 100 pilots signed up 99 went to china one pilot ajax bombler was held back he had violated an earlier passport by fighting in the spanish civil war where he shot down six german and italian fighter planes the first batch of 31 avg personnel ground crews clerks and a chaplain sailed from san francisco in june and reached rangoon on july 28th the main group 37 pilots 84 ground crewmen and staff and two female nurses sailed on july 8th and i was on the second on the fontaine and uh very interesting trip over there half missionaries half avg people and uh i don't know who converted who on that trip i can tell you but those missionaries had a fertile field to operate in that's for sure and we met a couple of heavy cruises in salt lake city and the uh north hampton and they were coming out of australia when when we were going in and the ambassador met us we went into brisbane but the funny thing about it is but the ambassador said manny said if i had a headache he said i've been rounding up sailors there for a week see the diggers were all off fighting the war you know the ratio of women was about five to one to one man and when those sailors run ashore man these women swarmed on them they thought they had died and gone to heaven the liner and her escort slipped south of the equator toward australia to avoid the caroline and marshall islands occupied by the japanese they arrived in singapore on august 11 where the avg contingent waited for transit to rangoon chanult arrived back in cheng king on july 18th his chinese dc-3 landing in the midst of a japanese bombing raid he took careful note of japan's new g4m betty bombers and studied the wreckage of a japanese zero fighter shot down during the raid months earlier chiang kai-shek had asked for american fighters and pilots in part to protect shang king his capital city that help had not arrived in time imperial japanese bombers pounded chung king again and again and again but across the mountains at airfields in burma an american tiger was waking and a legend was about to be born i don't think people have ever really understood the significance of what's halloween mission and now the people who were involved in that do but none of the historians have really picked up on it and i understand that this could have been an entirely different world you know if that mission had failed [Music] summer 1941 the eyes of the western world are on europe german armies had overrun much of the continent president roosevelt signed the lend lease act to aid britain which stood alone against hitler's ambitions the western allies paid little attention to events in asia desperate for natural resources especially coal and oil japan invaded manchuria in 1931. its occupation gradually spread into greater china until 1937 when a skirmish at beijing ignited a full-scale war imperial japan's well-trained and well-equipped armies and air forces swept aside the chinese defenders to occupy all of china's ports and major cities the nationalist chinese government under generalissimo chiang kai-shek retreated to yunnan province in far western china in 1939 japan invaded indochina for its rich deposits of coal and oil if china fell all of asia and the western pacific might fall to the japanese sword that year madame chiang kai-shek hired claire chennault a fighter pilot recently retired from the u.s army air corps to train and lead china's struggling and outdated air forces in washington war with japan was looking increasingly likely president roosevelt gave chanel permission to recruit 100 u.s army and navy fighter pilots along with ground crews to fight for china as the american volunteer group or avg under provisions of the lend lease act chanult was given 100 p-40 tomahawk fighter planes just rolling off the curtis wright assembly lines living and working at primitive jungle airstrips enduring shortages of planes pilots and supplies and fighting against a vastly superior enemy the avg flying tigers would give the japanese a series of staggering blows that would tip the balance in the war in china i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] [Music] [Music] the first american volunteer group of the chinese air force was officially created on 1 august 1941 by order of generalissimo chiang kai-shek pilots and ground staff began arriving in burma from the states in early august by ship to rangoon then on the narrow gauge burma railway to kaido field at tangu 175 miles north of rangoon what the newcomers found at kaido field didn't please them they griped about the tropical heat the torrential rain the millions of bugs the primitive bamboo huts the uncomfortable cots and the british supplied cigarettes and food avg chaplain paul frillman feared a mutiny it was a real harsh environment tango the brits wouldn't even be there then move on over in the summertime butch carney who had been with chennault in yunnan china appointed three squadron leaders robert sandy sandell a former army flight instructor got first squadron second squadron went to jack newkirk a navy fighter pilot from the carrier yorktown arvid olsen a veteran p-40 pilot got third squadron each squadron leader chose 12 pilots newkirk chose mostly navy flyers olson picked only army pilots with more pilots filtering in through august and september chanult began the task of turning them into an effective fighting unit he established what came to be called chanult's kindergarten daily classes on geography jungle survival and most importantly on tactics training curriculum would be 60 hours of lecture technical lectures and 60 hours of familiarization in the p-40 and of course the navy guys we're throwing nothing but round engines so you know it was a challenge on the checkout somewhere forget everything the army air corps has taught you about fighting chanel told the men instead they were to adopt the battle-proven tactics used by the raf in britain that meant two plane formations against fighters for maneuverability and mutual protection and a three-plane flight for firepower against bombers [Music] [Applause] the japanese planes turn much faster than our tomahawks he told them never get into a turning fight with the japanese hit their formations from above out of the sun to scatter and confuse them then pick them off one by one he told them these were the tactics the japanese would try to use against the americans as described in a captured japanese training manual japanese pilots he told the men were well trained and disciplined they knew how to fly and they knew how to shoot but they could be beaten by hit-and-run diving attacks one of the characteristic things of all the leaders of all the air forces in the world for the most part was that they're wrong about almost everything they did but you had a few people like claire chinald and a few others who had a journeyman's view of the problem they they looked at it not from some abstract uh giulio douay point of view but from the standpoint of i've got a tool in my hand how do i use it and if he was an experienced fighter pilot as as claire chanel was you knew exactly what time and dive tactics would produce you know what turning tactics would produce and you knew what the airplane in your inventory would produce so he looked at the p-40 and he knew it was not a dogfighter and he tailored his tactics to it and and served beautifully he obviously knew a hell of a lot about the japanese tactics because after observing him in his tactical lectures he was able to impart the things to us that made actually is what really made us with the tactics that he taught us you see the uh people down in the pacific they had they had the same airplanes we had but they lost probably all of them and the reason they did is because they did not use the tactics that snow taught us and those taxes were sent back to the war department but the other dissimilar to the guys down in the pacific but they were very simple and i guess they thought they were so simple didn't mean anything back in the states some of the recruits had been told that they would mostly be shooting down unarmed japanese transports some of them signed on with the avg because they thought that fighting the japanese would be safer than fighting the germans two of the pilots were killed in training accidents in september at the end of the month seven pilots and a crew chief quit and sailed for home [Music] [Applause] [Music] tex hill eddie rector and 15 other pilots reached tongue on september 15 and were assigned to squadrons the following day navy pilots hill and rector went to the second squadron first time i met you know i could never have been more impressed i mean the features on that guy if you've ever seen pictures of chanel uh is uh these are craigy wrinkle and those black eyes which come from somewhere they must have some indian blood in them somewhere back down the way i know he's from french huguenot background but anyhow he's the kind of guy that immediately uh instills confidence in you i i know that i was impressed right if you told me to go through that wall i'd i'd go um he was a great guy he he was very loyal to the people at work for him he had a lot of people above him that didn't like him because he made them look like ned in the third reader [Music] so [Music] more pilots arrived in october worried about a possible air attack on kaido field from nearby thailand chenolte sent his three squadron leaders on a recon flight thailand was officially neutral but it had almost certainly been penetrated by the japanese the three pilots scouted as far east as chiang mai but saw no signs of the enemy we had no nav aids everything was dead resting the maps we had originally were french maps and any relation between that map and the terrain would be a coincidence and the first maps that we got there were any good where the first jobs were shot down then the jobs had pretty good match and later on in 1943 of course they met our country mapped the area and got very good maps in on 26 october an unidentified aircraft flew over kai daw at 6 000 feet and the next day a group of six aircraft scouted the field from high altitude avg pilots scrambled but their tomahawks could not climb fast enough to catch the intruders channel believed they were japanese planes flying from thailand in fact they were mitsubishi ki-15s flown from hanoi vietnam 600 miles to the east sent by the japanese army air force to photograph airfields in burma designed as a fast civilian male plane the mitsubishi ki-15 wild goose served the imperial japanese army and navy as a light attack bomber and reconnaissance aircraft it was amazingly fast for an airplane with a fixed landing gear with a top speed of 298 miles per hour the allies code named it babs november 3rd would be remembered as circus day at kaidawa two tomahawks ran off the end of the runway one of them a total loss two pilots taxied their planes into parked aircraft another pilot hit the brakes and stood his p-40 on its nose while two hapless mechanics sat on its wings seven planes damaged in one day two days later ed conant a veteran navy flying boat pilot with little time in land planes cracked up another p-40 his third in a week two more the mechanics said would make conant a japanese ace chanult sent an angry letter to his stateside recruiters demanding that they weed out the timid and incompetent 26 more pilots arrived in mid-november among them a feisty hard-drinking marine fighter pilot named greg boyington it was just uh real primitive when i got the guests to that you know we the environment we're in our guys were very resourceful and china didn't put a lot of restrictions on us he just told us to let us use what engineering we could we had and go out and kill as many jobs as we could [Music] a few days after they arrived one of the new pilots was flipping through a magazine and saw a photo of a british p40 with a shark's mouth painted on its nose he showed it to his squadron mates and they asked chenault for permission to adopt it as their squadron marking chanult said it should be the group's emblem within a week every tomahawk on the field had a shark's face it looked said one pilot mean as hell squadron emblems also appeared the first squadron chose a green apple and a uniformed atom chased by a naked eve symbolizing the first pursuit nickname adam and eve's second squadron's planes sported a black and white panda the symbol of china and third squadron hell's angels chose a bright red nude with wings and a halo every plane also carried the insignia of the chinese air force a white 12-pointed star the last group of avg personnel four pilots and nine flight instructors reached burma on november 25th the pilots went to kaidawa the instructors were sent to yunnan china to train chinese air force pilots november also brought promises of greater support for the avg more planes more spares more supplies more pilots and ground crews in washington and london everyone who mattered now understood that the war with japan was coming the british offered chanult a squadron of brewster buffalo fighters from singapore along with their pilots and ground crews and there were promises of british and american bombers the brewster buffalo was the us navy's first monoplane fighter introduced in 1939 it never lived up to its promises by early 1941 the buffalo was already considered obsolete outperformed by the new grumman f4f wildcat and by most japanese and german fighters by the first week of december 1941 the american volunteer group had 60 combat-ready p-40s at kaido field three more pilots quit leaving 82 pilots on the avg roster in burma [Music] yesterday december 7th 1941 a date which will live in infamy without warning japanese forces attacked pearl harbor hong kong malaya and wake island from his headquarters in kunming chennault immediately put the avg on a war footing he assigned the third squadron olsen's hell's angels as the assault squadron armed fueled and on alert two days later an alert at 3 30 a.m sent four p-40s into the air it was a false alarm landing in the dark tex hill overshot the runway his mates found him standing dazed near his wrecked tomahawk with an unlit cigarette in one hand and an unlit match in the other his clothing soaked in gasoline it was true that we were a mercenary but uh but then when the japanese hit pearl harbor then we were involved our country was involved in the war and what brought us together here that was necessary you know it was it was teamwork we had a hardcore that had flown together we didn't have people rotating through us we're all in the same boat over there for this year [Music] the british asked chanult for a squadron to help protect rangoon's harbor and its airport at ming aladan both staging points for supplying british forces in singapore on thursday december 12th the 18 tomahawks of the third squadron the hell's angels left kai daw and flew to ming aladan their ground crews support staff and three more pilots traveled by truck or train to rangoon in mid-december brigadier general john magruder sent a message to chanult asking him and his pilots to return to the u.s military the question of chanult's rank was left open chanult was not unwilling to return to the army but he wanted the rank of general he sent a message to madame chiang kai-shek asking her opinion there would be advantages to making the avg a u.s army unit he told madam shang in aircraft supplies reinforcements and discipline the only disadvantage he said was that a commander might replace him with less experience in china [Music] kaido field was less than 100 miles from the thai border and barely 300 from chiang mai thailand's second largest city with no effective early warning system chanult worried that kaido was too vulnerable to a japanese airstrike he sent out p-40s to look for japanese planes in and around chiang mai the patrol found nothing but chanult was still jumpy he wired chung king asking to move the avg out of burma back to china madam chang replied that the avg could leave kaido and move to kunming but that the hell's angels would have to stay at ming aladan near rangoon kaido would be manned as a backup field and repair station between rangoon and kunming the p-40s of the first and second squadrons 34 planes in all flew the 700 miles to kunming on december 17th arriving just hours after japanese bombers hit the city most of the avg ground crews and supplies traveled by truck over the burma road to china a slow and dangerous journey even after the road had been widened and leveled in 1940 it took them two weeks to reach kunming what channel did he had in every village and the areas that we operated on he had people who had radios on they either had mostly cw died and i did but they had these lookouts in every village so when we'd move into a base like this would be the the map take the map and this would be this the base we're going to operate out of then you draw concentric circles going up to 300 kilometers and so when all these villagers would have to any village that heard something like engine noise i hear engine noise and put a flag right on that village and pretty soon you wouldn't believe it but these pretty soon these flags began to line up and you knew they were coming in it was so accurate and we knew and when they had hit that 150 kilometers circle while that's when we launched and that would give us time to get to 1820 thousand which was our best altitude and uh they'd be there and the other thing that stood us in good stead with that system was if a guy got lost which is real easy to do um first first village you'd come to get scattered you know in a fight or something you come down over that village and shoot a short burst that information go immediately back into your base well you didn't know where you were but the base knows where that village is when they give you a vector then you can come in on it's real simple but my god it was effective [Music] [Applause] three days after the p-40s arrived in kunming chanult's early warning net reported japanese bombers coming from vietnam first squadron took to the air 16 p-40s and turned southwest to intercept the bombers second squadron flew back up while four of the pandas stayed close to kunming four others patrolled the northwest to catch any bombers attacking in a hook approach jack neukirk leading the group northwest spotted a formation of 10 bombers below him with no fighter escort they were kawasaki ki-48s of the 21st hikati based at hanoi introduced in 1939 the ki-48 was fast and maneuverable but carried a light bomb load with no armor and only three machine guns it was vulnerable to attack in burma it was often used as a dive bomber its allied code name was lily newkirk's p-40s dove out of the sun firing at the lilies from far out of range the bombers jettisoned their loads turned tail and ran newkirk led his pandas back to kunming a few minutes later the adam and eve's spotted the same group of lily bombers south of kunming sandel ordered two pilots to fly top cover the p-40s attacked the bombers from every direction in a disorganized melee they seemed to have forgotten all of shannon's lessons about hit and run attacks two plane formations and japanese tactics the two pilots flying top cover also ignored their instructions and joined the fight the enemy formation was a diamond four flanked by two v's of three the right hand v was hit first by a mass of p-40s and all three lilies were shot down the avg was credited with four lilies at the cost of one p-40 heading home eddie rector ran out of fuel and bellied into a field near kunming japanese records for the flight show three lilies lost and seven damaged including some that crash-landed at hanoi 14 airmen died on the mission for the japanese unit it was their worst bloody nose in a long time shaken by the loss of 30 percent of the planes and a third of the airmen on a single raid the 21st hikitai never returned to kunming the people of kunming greeted the avg pilots as heroes for months the city had endured near bombing by the japanese the americans had driven off the attackers and saved the city from another dose of devastation you can't believe how grateful they were these poor people have been bombed all these years you know and just kill thousands i mean just the cities use them as a target chinese civilians saved many allied pilots who were shot down in china in spite of cruel and severe reprisals by the japanese you know the guerrillas were the chinese communists they never committed any large forces or anything but they joined together with the nationalists against a common enemy and they were the guys they were responsible for saving a lot of our troops unless you just fell right on top of the japanese right it gets you out of there the chinese people are just such wonderful people really i mean a chinese friend is the best friend you'll ever have in america a nation hungry for good news of the war and desperate for heroes time magazine picked up the story and christened the avg as the flying tigers the name was probably suggested months before by one of the young men working in washington dc on the avg's behalf back at kunming chennault was not pleased by the tigers performance he sat them down listed off their mistakes one by one and told them next time get them all the avg third squadron was joined by 34 british buffaloes and four blenheim bombers but only half of the buffaloes were combat ready with no real reserve closer than kunming 900 miles to the northeast olson's hells angels began calling themselves the lost squadron on december 23rd the imperial japanese army air force struck rangoon from airfields at bangkok thailand and phnom penh cambodia 60 ki-21 heavy bombers took off for burma without fighter escort the mitsubishi ki-21 carried more than a ton of bombs six machine guns and a crew of five to seven men it was used with great success in china malaysia and the philippines allied code name sally fifteen sally's were headed for the airfield at ming aladan they were to be joined by mitsubishi ki-30 light bombers allied codename anne escorted by ki-27 fighters codenamed nate the three groups were supposed to rendezvous over thailand and strike rangoon in one large formation but their timing was off and the attackers reached the city in three separate waves the sally's came first in tight v of these formation a few miles behind them came the ands escorted by a disorganized gaggle of nate's about a dozen p-40s rose to meet the attackers raf buffaloes damaged one bomber before the tomahawks joined the battle in the melee that followed two tomahawks were shot down paul green bailed out and survived five of the sally's were shot down one-third of the formation with the loss of 30 crewmen south of rangoon six other hells angels faced a tight formation of 18 sally's heading for the oil refinery at cerium leading one three-plane flight neil martin's p-40 was caught in a hail of fire from the sally's machine guns and went down in flames two of the sally's were shot down a third group of 27 bombers hit rangoon killing more than a thousand people mostly civilians one of those bombers crashed on the way home it was another bloody nose for the japanese at the end of the day they had lost seven bombers with many more damaged though the allied claims were higher japanese pilots and gunners claimed to have destroyed 43 allied fighters that day in fact the raf lost five buffaloes with their pilots and the avg lost three planes and two pilots on christmas day the japanese struck at rangoon launching a mass formation of 63 bombers escorted by 25 fighters their battle plan came apart splitting the attackers into three groups at ming aladan there were only 12 tomahawks and 14 buffaloes ready for battle against an armada of 88 enemy planes two avg replacement pilots arrived from kaidawa on christmas eve with a truckload of ammunition as the japanese formation crossed into burma olson sent his hell's angels up to meet them the first fight occurred over cerium south of rangoon 20 sally's escorted by 15 hayabusas were heading home after bombing the city the nakajima ki-43 hayabusa was one of japan's most successful fighters highly maneuverable ki-43s shot down more allied aircraft than any other japanese fighter and most of japan's aces flew ki-43s allied codename oscar seven p-40s tore into the japanese formation seven against thirty-five they shot down twelve bombers and three fighters which they mistakenly identified as zeroes two p-40s crash-landed but both pilots escaped with minor injuries north of the city the raf and the rest of the avg tangled with a much larger mass of bombers and fighters leading a fight of three p 40s parker dubois dove on a hayabusa overtaking the enemy fighter he rolled sharply to avoid ramming it his wingtip sliced through the oscar's wing severing it at the root and the oscar spun away dupoy landed with four feet missing from his own wing the allies claimed 28 japanese planes destroyed on christmas day japanese records put their losses at about half that number in the chaos of aerial combat several pilots or gunners might claim the same kill each thinking it was his own the excitement the panic the adrenaline and the confusion of combat made such errors inevitable on christmas day the japanese pilots and gunners who attacked rangoon claimed a whopping 38 allied fighters shot down half again the total number of allied fighters in the air actual allied losses were two tomahawks and five buffaloes the men at ming aladan were nervous and worn out in less than two weeks the hell's angels had lost a quarter of their pilots dead wounded or missing their planes were badly shot up leaflets dropped by japanese planes warned of an airborne invasion olsen wired send reinforcements or move the squadron to kunming chanult assigned newkirk's second squadron to reinforce hell's angels at rangoon then he sent an appeal to president roosevelt for more fighters and pilots and for three dozen twin engine bombers with american crews to form the second american volunteer group the president responded with a promise of more pilots and 50 of the new curtis p kitty hawks the avg had several follow-ups in the in the concept and the second avg they had had a bomb group and they had three more fighter groups and but they didn't get any further than australia and they stopped them there because the war was going on and they needed them down there and that they never got to china [Music] at rangoon in the days after christmas the pilots braced for another japanese attack but the skies were quiet the japanese fighters and bombers were standing down and licking their wounds on december 31 general magruder sent a cable to washington recommending that the avg should become the 23rd fighter group despite the avg's unquestioned success in its first three battles magruder offered a very negative assessment of the unit's potential unless it was completely reorganized with u.s army officers enlisted men and logistics support the avg could have little military value new kirk's panda bears including tex hill all arrived in rangoon by new year's day frustrated that no japanese planes were rising up to fight newkirk decided to take the fight to the enemy the target was a small airfield about 50 miles inside thailand near the village of tok four pandas took off from ming aladon before dawn on january 3rd newkirk led the mission with bert christman on his wing hill flew on howard's wing the pandas arrived at sun up to find nine nate fighters idling on the ground like sitting ducks unknown to the pandas the nates were just returning from their own pre-dawn mission we're going over there and going to surprise the guys went out to daylight to catch them on the field well unfortunately we forgot to look up bert chrisman had uh engine trouble he had turned back so there were three of us in string headed down to straight to the field of the airplanes are lined up well first thing i know it's got slid in between me and howard and i was just i mean i'm right behind this guy and i was i was so excited that i didn't even bother to look through this fight you had a ring and bead side on the airplane i uh but the way i am i was loaded with every fifth round was a incendiary so it looked just like a hose coming out i just was just right behind this guy wasn't 50 yards and uh he just blew up but simultaneously a guy i didn't see made overhead pass on me and he shot 33 holes in my airplane i never saw him just when i pulled off this guy just shot down i'm pulling into another guy coming this way head on when he shot head on these little i-97 had what was equivalent to about a 30 caliber uh 7.7 or something like that and it was really stuck in the prop and when it did well i threw my prop out of balance well i throttled back and got down and we were scattered at that time and separated and and i came on back to rangoon and i got van uh when jim howard came in uh uh in new kirk i knew crooked shot down two airplanes jim had gotten these on the ground he didn't even notice other guy got on his tail i said you go look at your airplane i went over there and he had 11 bullet holes and his airplane early the next morning the japanese struck back at rangoon with nate fighters and and bombers the nates shot down three pandas though all survived it was the japanese first clear victory over the avg so began a pattern of daylight raids by the p-40s against japanese airfields in thailand and pre-dawn raids by the japanese against rangoon's in mid-january hard-pressed american and filipino troops were preparing for a last stand on the baton peninsula for seeing victory in the philippines the japanese transferred two nate squadrons and two bomber groups about 75 aircraft from the philippines to china and burma general sugawara michio commanded the japanese air forces in the region in malaysia and singapore his bombers could operate with little or no opposition but in burma his losses were staggering and he had no taste for more he left a small force in thailand and transferred most of his fighters and bombers to other less troublesome battlefronts although new kirk's pandas were well outnumbered by the japanese they gave better than they got before long second squadron could only put 10 p-40s against the much larger japanese raids on january 16th the ground crews and staff of three british hurricane squadrons docked at rangoon with these reinforcements rangoon appeared secure but the japanese imperial army had other plans [Music] at the end of 1941 the japanese were pushing south through malaysia driving the british and commonwealth troops ahead of them in the philippines american and filipino units were retreating under the japanese onslaught beyond malaysia australia lay open to emperor's armies from new guinea the japanese could threaten not only australia but the main british and american supply routes to east asia to the west lay india britain's greatest colony if india fell japan could reach the oil fields of the mideast and link its asian empire with germany in the west but to reach india the japanese had to cross burma a country protected by mountain ranges like fortress walls the british believed that their navy could protect burma from an attack from the sea and that the mountains would protect it from an attack over land but on january 19th far down the narrow tale of burma that runs along the melee peninsula a small japanese detachment overran the airfield at tavoi 300 miles south of rangoon and the next day 35 000 japanese troops entered burma near tock east of rangoon abandoning their trucks for pack horses the japanese 55th division had crossed the mountains on foot to invade burma the british burma division had eighteen thousand soldiers on paper but its fighting corps was just four thousand british and indian troops against thirty five 000 japanese the japanese had to conserve their forces and so they they knew they couldn't occupy every square mile of china so they took the best real estate all down the coast all the ports and this meant that the chinese were then fighting without any external means of support except for the one supply line that ran through burma the burma road was china's only remaining link to its allies if the japanese could capture burma and cut the fragile lifeline china would stand or fall alone and i've always said that if he had put out his hand and said how do you do will you marry me i would have said how do you do yes i want to spend the rest of my life with you tex was a big deal because he'd been in life and time and a lot of mags a lot of newspaper stories about the flying tigers and john wayne had made a movie and played texas part in that movie and that was early in 1942 so he was you know the town was excited about having the reverend sam hill's brother come into town january 1942 the armed forces of imperial japan are advancing throughout asia and the pacific [Music] nearly a million japanese forces occupy china's coastal ports and bomb her inland cities in an uneasy alliance the nationalist and communist chinese fight a guerrilla war against the invaders from their bases in china indochina and thailand japanese forces are advancing south along the melee peninsula to new guinea if new guinea falls the japanese can threaten the allies pacific supply lines and without allied arms and supplies australia would be cut off and the main line of defense against japanese aggression would move to the west coast of the united states at rangoon in burma in early 1942 a small group of american fighter pilots is fighting back against the japanese far outnumbered by their enemy the american volunteer group commanded by claire chennault is destroying japanese bombers and fighters in the air and on the ground we're the first guys that defeated the japanese and that's why there's a lot of focus on us because we were losing everywhere you know and uh it's just like the new little raid you know it was a morale thing it's just like the john wayne movie corny as it was it was a timely movie and people needed to get a hold of something because these were real dark days in our history and and we're the first guys that ever defeated them they were rolling over everybody the allies need china to stay in the war to tie down a half a million japanese occupation troops and to provide a base from which to strike at the japanese homeland a single supply route from india through burma to kunming is china's only remaining lifeline to the west if the japanese cut that lifeline china will fall the burma road is the key and for a few critical months in 1942 the american volunteer group stands virtually alone against the japanese i'm gary sinise and this is missions that changed the war [Music] through the spring of 1942 the military forces of imperial japan appeared unstoppable and on nearly every other battlefront around the world allied forces were digging in or falling back the british believed burma was safe the british navy stood guard against any seabourn invasion from the south britain's burma division commanded by lieutenant general sir howard alexander had a fighting force of just 4 000 british and indian troops but alexander believed it was sufficient the japanese had forces across the border in thailand but along the border was a rugged nearly trackless rampart of mountain ranges no army said alexander could cross that barrier in force the japanese would prove him wrong on january 19th 300 miles south of rangoon on burma's long tail that stretches down the melee peninsula japanese troops slipped across the mountains overran the allied airfield at tavoi and began moving north sweeping the opposition aside the next day the main invasion force 35 000 japanese troops entered burma 100 miles east of rangoon they advanced quickly toward the city through the jungle the british thought was impassable when the japanese forced a crossing at the setang river rangoon's last defensive line alexander abandoned the port city and moved his burma division north to try to block the japanese on the road to mandalay while the battle was lost on the ground the flying tigers were mauling the japanese in the air throughout the japanese advance the avg shot down japanese fighters and bombers and strafed and bombed the japanese ground forces british prime minister winston churchill praised the avg for its fierce defense of rangoon comparing it to the royal air force and its defense of the british isles the victories they have won over the paddy fields of burma may well prove comparable in character if not in scope to those won over the orchards and hopfields of kent in the battle of britain the avg suffered few losses compared to the mauling they were inflicting on the japanese but one loss in particular hit them hard in mid-march jack newkirk led 10 p-40s to raid ching mai and lampang two heavily defended japanese airfields in thailand two nights before the raid newkirk told tex hill that he feared the mission would be his last hill offered to take his place but newkirk said no at ching mai newkirk's raiders caught the japanese flat-footed and destroyed several aircraft on the ground despite a storm of anti-aircraft fire at lompang as robert keaton pulled his fighter out of a strafing dive he saw a fireball blast 100 yards through the jungle below it was newkirk's p-40 your you cursing he had a premonition i had two guys had premonitions and he was one of them and he sat down and wrote that letter that night and said if anything happens to him and he'd like for me to have that squad and so no conor and uh i brought ed rector up as my vice quarter leader chiang kai-shek sent three divisions of the chinese army to burma under the command of u.s army general joseph stillwell to try to halt the japanese advance and protect the burma road but stillwell's efforts were frustrated by a stream of contradictory orders from chiang and by the chinese troops who were poorly led and reluctant to fight the japanese advanced northward and the allied retreat became a route as british indian chinese and burmese soldiers and civilians fled along the escape routes to india and china the japanese overran tangu in early april capturing intact the crucial bridge across the setang river near burma's east border with china [Music] tex hill's second squadron was stationed at loywing about 75 miles north of laccio they had been flying missions in support of the chinese divisions fighting in burma their air strikes against japanese columns and truck convoys were successful but did little to slow the enemy's advance [Music] i was a senior guy and uh i had to make a call after a picture up there i had a real burden uh because we lost all of our early warning system and jeff came in just a daylight and i was going on a different mission i stepped up on the side of my airplane and i looked up and i saw these eight fighters peeling off coming down and just stepped down off airplane and they were coming right over there where i actually fired a pistol out of my father you know had a uh enough lead on the guy very easily knocked one down for pistol that's close the next day 29 april the japanese 56th division captured lashio the end of the rail line from rangoon and the western terminus of the burma road the chinese sixth division in a desperate fighting retreat was virtually destroyed as a fighting unit alexander ordered all allied personnel to leave burma hill needed to evacuate his squadron to pau shan an airfield on the burma road east of the saulween river about 125 miles into china but the weather at loi wing was socked in and the japanese were not far away there's a trail from the last show that a jungle trailer that could come up so i figured on a force march they could be there in a day and sure enough that's exactly what happened to that base we had no defense at all as far as ground personnel a jungle trail led from loy wing to a point on the burma road a few miles east of the japanese advance hill prepared to send his men pilots and ground crew upped that trail to join the mass of refugees heading for china as he was about to give the order the fog lifted to 800 feet only a handful of the panda bear fighters were flyable before they left the crews set fire to 22 precious p-40s that were waiting for repairs and we got out and got into power sand and the mass of humanity the only way you could travel is on that road i mean you couldn't get off either side and this massive refugees stacked in there is unbelievable a few days later chanult called hill and the rest of his squadron back to kunming the japanese drove north threatening to trap the allied forces in western burma including the commander general stillwell from his headquarters at schweibeau west of lachio stillwell led his staff west toward india the japanese were rushing to cut off all escape routes stillwell set a grueling pace of 14 miles a day over steep and rugged mountain trails cut off from the world listed as missing in action the 59 year old general led the column on a 10-day trek to safety without the loss of a single life [Music] the burma road was china's only lifeline to the west and now it too was blocked it was critical to the allies that china should remain in the war nearly half of japan's army some three-quarters of a million men were fighting in china holding the coastal cities against chinese counter-attacks and exploiting china's vast natural resources if china sued for peace japan could shift its troops in china to battlefronts in the pacific islands malaysia and burma the emperor's armies could threaten australia they could attack india britain's most important colony in the region grinding across india to the middle east japan might forge a geographical link with its principal ally nazi germany that's sort of a what-if proposition that what if the japanese had pushed on through india and they had come to their sides as one as certainly the japanese had hoped and certainly some of the indians had hoped and the germans on their hand had broken through the suez canal and linked up with the japanese actually i think that had that happen both nations have been so exhausted that they would have probably collapsed because it was really beyond their reach but there was a danger that the japanese might get to india and there there were two types of people who opposed the british there were the gandhi types who were non-violent and then there was a son chandra boujee who uh it's spelt vose but is pronounced something like boujee and they were violent they wanted to use arms uh against the british so it's conceivable that uh there there could have been a link up there and they could have gotten some help from the indians japan had an opportunity early in the war perhaps to to make a thrust into india and they elected not to because of british resistance also i don't know that the indian population would have responded to japan any more readily than they were responding to the british i don't think they wanted to trade one conqueror for another there was an element in india under boza who were wanting independence for india and who subsequently collaborated with the axis but as a mass uprising of the indian people or a mass movement of the indian people against the british i just don't see it happening [Music] china's supply line had to stay open with all land and sea routes blocked the allies proposed a daring plan to supply china by air the task was assigned to the united states 10th air force the u.s army air force had no experience creating a continuous airlift an air bridge so it called on officers who had experience with the new air corps ferrying command or with civilian air carriers on 8 april 1942 launching from the raf airfield at dinjon in india's assam state two borrowed dc3s carried 8 000 gallons of aviation fuel for the flying tigers the first trip over the himalayas to kunming china by the end of april the army air force had established a more or less regular air service between india and china with a ragtag fleet of 27 aircraft they hauled in supplies and brought out wounded pilots flying the hump from india to china faced winds of up to 200 miles per hour violent turbulence aircraft icing and instrument weather conditions with cargo loads far above their rated weights the c-47s and dc-3s clawed their way to altitude skirting mountains that soared to 25 000 feet the men who flew what we now call the helm were extraordinary in that every flight could have wounded up as as a fatality by something as simpler as a bird strike into your carburetor taking out one engine because they were forcing the airplanes that they had and initially largely c-47s later c-46s to fly almost at their maximum capability to fly at that altitude you had to use a supercharger on the c47 engines and that's a laborious process that you go through and you it's you feel as you do it that you just hope the engine keeps running because you've got to make make the control manipulations in a certain way but you're flying at an altitude in which the air is thin you're on oxygen and the weather can be suddenly catastrophic and the losses were terrible they would lose airplanes and and with no hope of of recovery i mean you you didn't land in a meadow and somebody flew a helicopter into rescue you went into a mountain peak and were killed and they uh they called it as you know the the aluminum trail because of so much so many aircraft crashes across it in march 1942 allied command designated the far east as the china burma india theater or cbi under the command of general joseph stillwell but the european and pacific theaters of war would continue to get the lion's share of men materials and press coverage [Music] [Music] by late april the japanese controlled most of burma british forces were fleeing to india the chinese forces in burma were scattered and on the run the japanese had captured la shio the western end of the burma road and the road lay open to china and kunming four hundred miles beyond kunming lei chong king china's capital and chiang kai-shek's headquarters atlasio in burma the 56th red dragon armored division an elite japanese unit was fat with captured supplies and ready to strike if the japanese chose to drive east toward chung king only weak forces would oppose them chung king would fall and with it all of china in early may the 56th armor division turned eastward chanult sent reconnaissance flights down the burma road from kunming his pilots reported that the japanese armored column was moving toward the saulween river slowed only by mobs of refugees and fleeing chinese soldiers on 4 may the japanese vanguard was near the west bank of the saulween river east of the river the road to kunming lay open to the invaders chanult was seriously alarmed he knew the power of the 56th armored division and he knew that if kunming fell the avg's supply line over the himalayas from india would be cut off the transport planes flying over the hump could reach kunming but chong king was out of range and without that supply line the avg could not fight and china would fall essentially japan could never have conquered all of china the chinese could have just kept retreating and there would never been enough japanese available to control the areas and the japanese were not interested in doing that they were interested in controlling the areas that had resources that were useful to them the ports and the arable areas but if the chinese lay down their arms japan could shift vast armies out of china to the pacific islands malaysia and the indian frontier the sawween river is one of the longest free-flowing rivers in the world it tumbles 750 miles from glaciers high on the tibetan plateau through china burma and thailand to the andaman sea it is an untamed river navigable only in the last 50 miles from its mouth from china into central burma it flows through the grand canyon of the east a magnificent gorge up to thirteen thousand feet deep where the burma road crosses the saul green the canyon is several miles wide and a mile deep from the canyon's west rim the burma road plunges down 20 miles of narrow torturous switchbacks to reach the hoiting bridge across the river from the east bank the road climbs another 20 miles of switchbacks to escape the canyon on 4 may the head of the japanese column reached the west bank of the saulween river chennault knew the japanese advance had to be stopped and the saul wean was the place to stop but he was reluctant to send the avg to bomb and strafe the enemy column without orders from chung king the japanese armored column was moving up the burma road between lines of fleeing civilians and unarmed chinese soldiers an aerial attack would kill or injure scores if not hundreds of the helpless refugees crowded along the road there was little choice if the japanese were to be stopped chanult's fighters had to attack but chanel did not want to make that decision alone from kunming on 6 may he sent an urgent telegram to madame shanghai i consider the situation desperate he told madame chang if the japanese crossed the sallween they could drive to kunming in their captured chinese trucks the burma road and its bridges must be destroyed he told her the japanese advance must be blocked that same day chanult sent six tupelov bombers to strike japanese truck convoys that were heading toward the sawween from the west deep in the gorge the remnants of the chinese 36th division failed to stop the japanese at the river chinese soldiers blew up the bridge then fled a few advanced elements of the red dragon division crossed the sawlwin but the main column was halted waiting for an engineer battalion to erect a pontoon bridge that would carry its tanks trucks armored cars and artillery across the water from the west bank the huge column stretched up the 20 miles of switchbacks to the plateau and beyond to the west madame chang replied to chanel's telegram early the next day the 7th of may she ordered him to attack the japanese column with all available avg [Music] immediately chanult ordered tex hill to attack the vehicles on the west wall of the gorge hill chose three other pilots from his panda bear squadron ed rector frank lawler and tom jones all ex-navy pilots on may the 7th when i was asked to lead a mission uh the chinese had blown the bridge the main bridge there but the japanese had started building a pontoon bridge across so i took a force of uh eight planes four of us were navy guys that come out of a dive-bombing quarter and we uh were loaded up with uh these big russian bombs with 550 pounds roughly and uh some frags on the wing the p-40 is not a dive bomber a bomb released in a near vertical dive would hit the plane's propeller before it hit the target most of the flying tigers p-40s weren't even equipped to carry bombs but a month earlier first squadron had received a few of the new p40e models equipped with bomb shackles the avg mechanics had modified a few of the older p40bs so their belly tank shackles could carry 550 pound bombs hill and his companions took off that morning carrying fragmentation bombs and heavy demolition bombs four p40bs from arvid olsen's hells angels squadron flew top cover for hills fighter bombers the eight fighters flew the 200 miles to the saw wien through drenching rain they landed at yunan yi to refuel then took off again into more rain squalls near the gorge the fighter formation broke into the clear bright sun and blue skies revealed a river and landscape of breathtaking beauty and hundreds of armored vehicles and trucks and thousands of japanese troops packed onto the switchbacks from the river to the canyon's west rim and along the road on the plateau above nate's and oscars should have protected the massive japanese armored column but to hill's surprise no japanese fighter planes were visible the engineers had already completed part of the span that would carry the column across the river at a signal from hill the four flying tigers slid into single file and roared into their attack masked together the japanese could put up a storm of small arms fire the tiger's only defense was speed hill and his companions pushed their throttles to the stops and dove toward the canyon from a 60-degree dive hill released his demolition bomb to strike just beneath the canyon's rim where the road began its twisting 20-mile descent i got up there and i saw that that pontoon bridge wasn't all the way across where that road winds down that george was about a mile deep and the road was cut back into the into the mountain and so i was lucky enough to hit the road above with a bomb and knock the edge of the road off the 550-pound bomb slammed into the cliffside precisely on target and exploded as hills p-40 peeled away in a gut-wrenching turn huge slabs of rock and earth tumbled onto the roadway crushing and burying men and vehicles on the upper switchbacks [Music] [Applause] the blast from hill's bomb destroyed the roadway at the canyon's rim trapping the densely packed japanese column in the gorge and when i hit above it and they had a landslide that could shovel it off and uh it wouldn't be any big problem but uh when i knocked the edge of that road off now they've got to explain back into that mountain and that's rock you know behind hill rector and the others one by one loosed their bombs and bullets onto the hapless japanese column boulders rock slides earth and vehicles tumbled down the slope crushing trucks and men below or sweeping them off the roadway into thin air the canyon gave the japanese no cover from air attack like stair steps each loop of the twisting roadway offered only a sheer wall on one side and a precipitous drop on the other the column's only defense against the tigers was to shoot back but confusion and panic blunted that response again and again the four panda bears swept into the canyon raining fire on the japanese when their guns were empty they signaled to olson's hell's angels flying top cover olson's boys roared into the gorge making pass after pass to strafe the enemy until their ammunition was exhausted as the p40s climbed away and turned toward kunmig the japanese were already struggling to open a way back to the plateau below them the switchbacks and the cliffs were littered with crushed and burning vehicles and dead and wounded men in single file the kitty hawks attacked in a straight line to avoid careening into the canyon walls sometimes passing a mere 100 feet from their targets pulling up sharply at the end of a strafing run the p-40s tended to mush and each pilot held his breath hoping his plane would not pancake onto the river instead of climbing to safety when the four p-40s from the first squadron had exhausted their fragmentation bombs and ammunition the eight kitty hawks flying top cover dove in to take their turns at the killing ground like the day before the japanese fighter planes that should have been protecting the armored column were nowhere to be seen all of the flying tigers returned safely to kunming though some of their planes were riddled with holes from japanese ground fire in the canyon the japanese remained trapped in the open for three days they had no place to go i mean we slaughtered these guys i don't know how many people would kill farming and strafing them for three days over the next few days chanult's p-40 fighters and tupolaf bombers attacked the red dragon division in the gorge and west on the plateau on the 9th of may two days after tex hill's first attack the chinese 36th division crossed the river north of the burma road to harass the japanese on the plateau west of the salween by the 12th of may the battle was over the pontoon bridge that the japanese had tried to throw across the river was a useless wreck the roadway from the river's edge to the west rim of the canyon was all but destroyed the canyon's western slope and the road leading west from the gorge were littered with the hulks of japanese vehicles and the corpses of japanese soldiers the chinese army dug in on the east bank of the river and stayed [Music] the japanese never again ventured into the sawween gorge on the burma road they placed a token force on the western rim and lobbed cannon shells across the river until they were driven off two years later the american transport planes continued to fly over the hump from india to kunming bringing in vital supplies for the avg and other allied units fighting the japanese in china thailand and burma chung king did not fall nationalist china continued to fight on the allied side though shanghai sheck kept most of his forces in reserve saving them for a war against the chinese communists for the allied military and the american public both hungry for good news of the war the battle at the saulween river offered a rare victory and heroes worth celebrating the imperial japanese army and navy steamrolling their way across asia and the pacific could be stopped they would be stopped here was news coming from a group that was defeating the japanese in the air we weren't getting beat by him we were we were establishing victory so it was a wonderful moral tonic did the battle at the solween river gorge really change the war did it turn the tide in china and asia some historians argue that it did not the japanese some say had stretched their supply lines to the limit and could not advance farther east some argue that the japanese meant only to trap the chinese army at the salween that they never intended to attack kunming or chung king in truth no one still living knows for sure what the japanese intended or what an elite japanese armored division would have done or been ordered to do if it had bridged the sawween and reached the plateau on the eastern bank but certain facts are clear japanese units in china operated with far more autonomy than the highly centralized german military the japanese government didn't have the same control over its armed forces the onset of the chinese invasion was entirely engineered by the army without the approval of its superiors and in the conduct of the war in china the army maintained itself with the standard light japanese division instead of following it with the footsteps that it saw in europe of the heavier divisions with heavy tanks and heavy artillery and it conducted campaigns in china almost without regard to to the national policy the japanese had overrun burma capturing supplies along the way at rangoon tangu blasio and other allied bases kunming would be a similar prize the red dragon division did try to cross the sawween river its huge armored column poised on the western approach clearly intended to reach the plateau on the eastern side the japanese had taken the measure of their enemy and they knew that the chinese soldier was poorly trained poorly equipped and poorly led no match for the imperial army kunming was just 200 miles up the burma road defended by chinese troops it was the anchor in china's only remaining supply line a fat war prize just waiting to be taken [Music] so if kunming had fallen the allies only lifeline to china would have been cut the flying tigers would have been declawed and chiang kai-shek would probably have sued tokyo for peace the americans and the british needed china to continue to fight to tie down huge japanese armies and to provide the base from which to attack japan itself at that critical moment japan's iron spear was aimed at china's exposed jugular vein that spear was blunted and turned back at the sawween river gorge by the men and the airplanes of the american volunteer group i don't think people have ever really understood the significance of that's halloween uh mission and i understand that this could have been an entirely different world you know uh if that mission had failed here was 1942 war had gone badly for the allies on every front there wasn't anywhere where things were going well and all of a sudden we have this victory in china at the solowing gorge and had it been publicized the way it might have been it would have had about an equal amount of effect on american morale as the doodle rate it would have been a wonderful thing to have really exploited but it it didn't have the uh propaganda club that it should have had [Music] through early summer the avg continued to harass the japanese on july 4 1942 the american volunteer group officially ceased to exist it became the 23rd fighter group u.s army air force chanult was promoted to brigadier general commanding the 14th air force in china his new superior general clayton bissell offered immediate commissions to any tiger who would stay on in the 23rd fighter group but the men disliked and distrusted bissell and only five pilots stayed on tex hill ed richter and three other panda bears it was the same clayton bissell with whom chanult had so openly disagreed during the pre-war bomber mafia days [Music] hill returned to the states on new year's eve 1942 after 10 days in washington reporting on the situation in china he was assigned to eglin army air force base in florida on a brief trip home to victoria texas he met 19 year old maisie sale i saw this good looking blonde over there in church and i told brother sam i said man i need to meet that girl so uh he made arrangements for it and i went over to their home and victoria tex was a big deal because he'd been in life and time and a lot of mags a lot of newspaper stories about the flying tigers and john wayne had made a movie and played texas part in that movie and tex came in and he walked in the front door and uh put out his hand to shake hands with me and i've always said that if he had put out his hand and said how do you do will you marry me i would have said how do you do yes i want to spend the rest of my life with you and that's been almost 63 years and i feel that very same way to this day maisie broke a date with a navy cadet to spend the evening with tex we had two uh air bases there and all those cadets running at this street young thing you know and boy she was having a ball with she had so many boyfriends and she was a hell of a tap dancer she could jump off the floor up on the table and tap and uh so anyway i said you guys trying to contaminate that sweet young thing i better get her out of here ten days after their first meeting tex and maisie were married after just a few months in the states tex returned to china chanult had asked him to come back to command the 23rd fighter group through the end of the war the 23rd fighter group was in the midst of much of the fighting in china always small and ill-equipped the group took a heavy toll on japanese aircraft shipping and armies home on leave tex was at the rose bowl game on new year's day 1945 there he met general happ arnold chief of army air forces at a pre-game gathering arnold told tex he was disappointed in the way the air force had lost so many bases to the japanese in eastern china he said i thought you guys could handle this situation over there and i said well we could have if it had anything to do with and that started i said we couldn't get replaced in airplanes and the ones we did get were a bunch of junk war weary stuff that came out of boston florida he said we've never given used airplanes to replace an airplane i thought well general i don't know where you get your information i'm sure they'll know what i got and um so then i told them we couldn't get pilots he said we got three thousand surplus pilots i said well if you don't get them in the hands people can use them you might as well not train them boy i was hot i lost some awful good guys because i just they kept you know just flying them to death but uh so about that time uh uh mosley uh pulled him off on me and he said i want to tell you something that generator won't forget that sure enough the next morning boy they had me out of bed at 5 30 in the morning when we back in washington he had already had guys checking into it i found out what i told him was true and uh covered us up with p51 ds he took care of it right away and he just flooded that area with polish but you know there was almost one [Music] in seven months of combat the pilots of the american volunteer group claimed 297 enemy aircraft destroyed including 229 aerial kills 19 flying tigers became aces in combat against the avg the japanese lost 400 pilots and crewmen including four group commanders the flying tigers lost just 14 pilots killed captured or missing plus six more who died in training accidents in its fight against the japanese the avg was more successful than any other fighter group in the cbi theater they established an american president they showed that the american guys were brave that we were willing to die for our country and that it inspired people and it it continues to inspire people the the shark knows insignia still bring elicits the same response people go in and analyze the combat records and minimize the number of japanese airplanes that were shot down none of it really makes any difference the important thing is that they were there they were only people who were being successful during a period in time in which we were being shellacked by japan from one end of the asia to the other and for that they were invaluable well we were it was true that we were mercenaries but uh but then when the japanese hit pearl harbor then we were involved our country was involved in the war and what brought us together is that uh was necessary you know it was it was teamwork uh together and uh uh we had a uh hardcore that had flown together we didn't have people rotating through us china molded this into with three different branches and one of the finest fighting outfits in the world the hardcore to this good day uh really uh outstanding guys and uh real life family and we we cooperated in everything uh once the war started and then we got involved in it and now people really turn to the you know to win this thing tex hill's favorite saying was if you want to have a friend you have to be a friend in its darkest days china had no better friend than tex hill and the flying tigers of the american volunteer group [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: DroneScapes

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Keywords: doolittle raid, ww2 documentary, claire lee chennault, world war 2, wwii documentary, jimmy doolittle, flying tigers, the flying tigers, doolittle raid midway, b-25 mitchell, military history, b 29, boeing b-29 superfortress, enola gay documentary, the enola gay, enola gay plane, b-29 bomber, boeing b-29, boeing b29, hiroshima documentary, enola gay movie, pearl harbor, doolittle raid footage, doolittle raiders, p-40 warhawk, flying tigers dogfights, flying tiger

Id: gCu7y7y5L1c

Length: 442min 5sec (26525 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 09 2022